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Ask HN: Am I unhireable?

by 71a54xd on 11/6/23, 7:38 PM with 67 comments

• by jstarfish on 11/6/23, 11:43 PM

  > if my resume has black balled me as a hiring risk

  I think you're being a little paranoid. It's the market right now; everywhere is laying off or looking for ways to reduce headcount. This just isn't a good time. Despite that:

  > After probably a few hundred applications (mostly SWE but some product) I've only received first interviews from maybe ten?

  This has been my experience since internet applications became a thing. There's no incentive to curate active job postings by the people who post them, so many of these are duds.

  > I've managed all of four interviews that have gone all the way to the final round - only for me to be passed over.

  Nothing about you really stands out as problematic, but in my own opinion your heavy startup/crypto background makes you seem like someone only interested in money/getting rich quickly.

  You might be a great candidate, but I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction. Given a choice between you and a more-conservative candidate, I'd pick them.

  You're not fucked and there's nothing for you to change. It's a game of impressions. Just keep trying until you make the right one. That's difficult right now given economic conditions.

  > I'm at a point where if I cant even get a basic SWE role I might just work at a Fedex store to pay rent

  That'll be counterproductive.

  If you get desperate, go find some office job through a temp agency. Downplay all your credentials and forget the crypto stuff. Avoid call center work, take literally anything else in an office, apply your skills to automating some nonsense, and you can possibly negotiate your way into something better. (Or not, but if you need to wait the economy out it's steadier work than retail if you need full-time hours.)

• by sharemywin on 11/6/23, 9:06 PM

  If it was your resume you wouldn't be getting interviews.

• by PaulHoule on 11/6/23, 7:47 PM

  Hiring has slowed down. Quite a few people are reporting job hunts with statistics similar to yours who don’t have a particular reasons to think they blew up their career.

• by cheema33 on 11/6/23, 10:32 PM

  Without seeing your resume, it is difficult to answer your question. For me, all the crypto stuff on a resume would be a flag. Maybe not a red flag, but pink or orange. I know it is a personal opinion, but the entire crypto industry is tainted in my eyes.

• by edbaskerville on 11/6/23, 10:54 PM

  I'm 41, haven't had a normal full-time job in my adult life (unless you count 5 years of grad school), and I will go seriously looking for work in a couple months!

  I have no evidence for the following outlook, but I'm depending on it: if you're educated, if you're skilled, if you're a motivated learner, and if you have a good attitude, then you're not unhireable. Rather, you're in a rather enviable, privileged position relative to society at large.

  Maybe you won't find your dream job immediately, but my guess is you'll be fine in the big picture.

• by xyzelement on 11/7/23, 1:50 AM

  Thanks for asking the question. A few thoughts:

  1. The fact that you made it in-house and to final rounds means your resume was "fine" for those roles. The resume is what gets you the first phone screen, from then on they are interested enough.

  2. Interviewing is a numbers game and the market is harder right now. There are likely a ton of people applying to the same roles so even an "average" candidate is going to get bounced a lot. These rejects don't mean you're terrible.

  3. At the same time, the flip of #2 is that you need your resume to stand out. And frankly, the mindset matters here because it comes out in your words. If I had to put a headline on you, it would be something like "versatile developer with a product mindset, experienced from FAANG to multiple startups." That's the positive spin I can put on what I read from you above. But your actual post drips with self-... doubt? A bit of loathing maybe? So I wouldn't be surprised if you're massively under-selling yourself in your resume and interviews.

  4. For your crypto jobs if you want to down-play it, then focus those blurbs on the tech stack and your vague contribution (eg "launched initial MVP to X thousands of customers for $Y revenue" without dwelling on what the product actually did.)

  I hope these are helpful. Have someone with a lot of hiring experience review your LinkedIn and resume with a critical eye and listen to their feedback.

• by avgDev on 11/6/23, 10:09 PM

  The market slowed down quite a bit. Hopefully you have savings to weather the storm. My linkedin spam has died down quite a bit. I would get 2-3 good hits every few months and interview.

  Just keep sending out your resume. You survived Amazon interview and actually worked there so you should be hirable.

• by hombre_fatal on 11/7/23, 1:02 AM

  I was the first hire of a major bitcoin casino as my last main gig, but I don't think it's had any impact.

  I'm having a pretty bad time landing interviews. I'm not trying too hard yet, but it's pretty disheartening to get rejected for jobs with a listing that matches exactly what I was doing at my previous job.

  "Thanks for applying but we've moved on to other candidates!" on a job similar to what I just spent 6 years doing really makes me feel like an imposter. Is everyone else applying to this job an ex-FAANG SWE but me?

  I'm sure it's mostly due to the super competitive market (I haven't looked for a job in 10 years). But I also realize I have no big names on my resume. And as big as the bitcoin casino might be, it doesn't seem to have helped me. I fear that maybe it's just not seen as a particularly legitimate job, and might even seem sketchy or corny.

  Sometimes I wonder if the gig is up and I should just work at Costco for the season. I've only applied to 15 carefully selected jobs though. I would not be in a good mental state if I applied to 100+ like you have, jeez. I should start trying harder if that's what it's gonna take.

  Maybe we should set up a Discord for some group support.

• by x86x87 on 11/6/23, 8:28 PM

  It's mostly the market. Even people that "did all the right things" as far as "career" goes are having an exceptionally hard time getting hired.

  If there is one thing I would suggest is polishing your interviewing skills and technicak skills. After that keep building to stay sharp. The market is not going to recover in a few weeks so having a plan for what you're going to do before now and when yu land a new gig.

• by AussieWog93 on 11/6/23, 9:34 PM

  >Basically I had around a year at Amazon

  Assuming you were in an engineering role there and not stacking crates in the warehouse, no, you're not unhireable.

• by austin-cheney on 11/7/23, 8:39 AM

  Absolutely anybody is employable in software. This deeply buried comment was still upvoted 20 times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37966978

  All you have to do is pass an interview. Now by far the greatest challenge to attaining software employment is surviving resume death in order to make it to an interview. This has taught me a few things about hiring this year:

  * Get out of software. Ideally this means get into management but can also mean sliding into something else laterally like project management.

  * Or, be happy being a permanent beginner with elevated titles to compensate for years of service with no innovation, initiative, or real technical growth because all you do is chase trends and use tools.

  * If you want to stand out don’t be awesome. Things like superior competence are great for becoming an entrepreneur but not for employment. Just be smart enough and experienced enough to talk through an interview. If you do want to stand out AND be employable then have something other developers don’t have like a security clearance and/or professional certifications.

• by saluki on 11/6/23, 10:56 PM

  Sounds like you're having a typical experience in the current market. I just went through this being an early employee at a startup for the past three years and us suddenly meeting the end of our runway. It took a few months to land a new SWE role. Keep up the hunt. I would stay involved with your startup as long as possible if you're worried about a gap on your resume.

• by giraffe_lady on 11/6/23, 9:15 PM

  Joining the chorus of "it's just like that now."

  Unhireable is literally not getting any interviews. I have a friend with no degree, self taught and changed jobs four times in five years. Got laid off in march and hasn't had a single interview since then. That's what that looks like.

• by Clubber on 11/6/23, 11:46 PM

  >I've managed all of four interviews that have gone all the way to the final round

  I stay away from companies that have super complex hiring practices. It's like they want someone, but they have to be perfect (whatever that happens to mean at the time). In the dating world, most of those people end up single.

  We do a 30 minute initial screen call with one of our guys, then a team call for about an hour if it's going well, 30 minutes if it's not. We then get together and talk about the candidate, strengths, weaknesses, yae or nae. We'll interview for about a month or two then decide. If it's someone we really like we might jump on it early.

  If you are just interviewing with pure SV tech companies, maybe venture out into other industries.

• by Reubend on 11/6/23, 9:28 PM

  Nothing you've said so far sounds unhireable to me, but nothing sticks out as impressive or unique either. In a tough job market, I'd expect there to be plenty of great candidates out there, and this might not make the cut of being any better than them.

• by therealdock on 11/6/23, 9:24 PM

  Hey! I'm in the same boat.

  I was linked to this post because I just posted something similar (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38168753).

  If you end up having to scrap the other startup, want to help me solve this crisis? I know I'm not alone here. I've heard it from others.

  To be frank, these new startups claiming to be solving the engineer hiring problem and all these recruitment agencies aren't designed to solve the problem for you or I... They're designed to get as many hires as possible at our expense. They're quantity, not quality.

  Maybe we can come up with something together. :-)

• by speedgoose on 11/6/23, 9:01 PM

  I don’t know in which part of the world you live, but have you tried to use your professional network ? You may have an old coworker who liked you and could hire you or recommend you.

• by CodeWriter23 on 11/6/23, 11:09 PM

  Not unhireable, but you are probably going to have to find an employer where the fit is good both ways. It may frustrate finding something else, but when you do it will be good.

  BUT I am going to ask as a rhetorical question, why isn't your startup making money? I can tell you why mine isn't, I made a product only one customer wants. Which isn't really a product. Maybe a pivot or two...

• by rsynnott on 11/7/23, 12:02 PM

  If it was _just_ people not wanting to hire job-hoppers, then you wouldn't have gotten the interviews in the first place; if your work history makes you unhireable for a company, they're not going to bother interviewing you, because interviewing you is very expensive.

  Is returning to Amazon an option? They seem to be hiring at least to some extent right now.

• by hnshatup on 11/7/23, 4:39 AM

  > I took a solid opportunity to work as a technical product manager for a year at a quickly growing crypto project with real utility (I know.. I know..) and largely had a great experience until they ran out of money.

  That sounds odd to me. The whole premise of crypto is that you dont need traditional money issued by oppressive goverments.

• by liquidpele on 11/7/23, 12:22 AM

  I have noticed there are certain job titles that will pigeonhole you… if you’re going for a development position then never put anything QA or TPM on the résumé. Ie make sure the resume is tailored to the job.

• by devwastaken on 11/6/23, 11:48 PM

  If you are U.S. based, yes. The long term consequences of not regulating tech are now resulting in the workers thrown to the side as the investors become richer. Move to the EU if you want a job.

• by jsyang00 on 11/6/23, 10:34 PM

  No, you're fine. It's the market probably. Keep grinding

• by mikhael28 on 11/6/23, 10:45 PM

  Definitely not 'unhireable'.

• by dustingetz on 11/6/23, 11:57 PM

  http://www.resumeraiders.com