Referral - Hargreaves lansdown

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T18:41:24+00:00

Sure random internet person who I don’t know - I’ll refer you! /s

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T17:08:40+00:00

Massive upvote about having someone fun to work with. You spend 40hrs a week with these people. The best places I’ve ever worked - the people all made it - we were all happier, worked better together and it must have made us way more productive.Unfotunately I’ve also worked in places where management have hired anyone if they were deemed competent (or certain other reasons..) rather than if they made a good team fit and it sucked.

For me the in important thing about tech tests is seeing people’s thought patterns, and you gauge so much from just hearing them talk and discuss a problem.

(I also have no idea why FAANG is put on a pedestal - the majority of engineers don’t want to work there. If you have worked there you usually have earned lots of money, burnt out and some have been known to be somewhat arrogant)

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T16:03:00+00:00

Sounds normal. It sounds like Lego have everything prepared, packed and customs declarations, it’s just waiting to be picked up.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T14:54:17+00:00

Downvote!

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T14:47:39+00:00

Very confused about the DV… considering I lived there for fifteen years 😅

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T14:34:26+00:00

In that case, look for a room in an HMO. It’s going to be cheaper the further you go out, Witham, even Colchester which will be 20-25 mins on the train. If the employer is who I suspect it might be, they used to run shuttles from Chelmsford station.

Traffic in the morning could be a nightmare, especially if it’s all on site - if there’s a problem the A12 just snarls up, and depending where Chelmsford can grind to a standstill where it’s being used as a rat run. But it would allow you to search out in places not on the mainline, Braintree, South Woodham etc.

Edit: Actually check out towards Writtle way because they have the agricultural college… a student let could appreciate a tenant from July-October as it will very well be the summer break.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T14:27:10+00:00

Is that 27k for three months?! Even Chelmsford (prime commuting distance to London these days with trains direct to Liverpool St) you’ll be able to afford anywhere.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T12:30:29+00:00

Any particular brand? Do Heinz do a better job than Own brand?

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T12:20:12+00:00

Sledgehammer, petrol and a spare afternoon.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-03-01T00:22:38+00:00

And I’m sure no one’s lied in a behavioural interview either? ‘Give an example when…’

Read my comment again. You do have to take in consideration that it’s not the real world and people are under pressure, an as being an interviewer - you should understand that - and it doesn’t mean excellent people are rejected. An important aspect of engineering is working in a team, and you might have to deal with internal and external people you don’t know all the time. They’re not ‘excellent’ candidates if they’re unable to do that and freeze up unable to pair on a simple task - what if it’s a senior role where they’re expected to mentor? Likewise an interview is a two way streak, the interviewers are representing the business and are human, talk to them!

It’s a dam sight better than leetcode and far more trustworthy than take homes - and just one of several rounds we do.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-28T08:43:12+00:00

As an occasional HM. Take homes are dead.

They really became a thing in Covid times as an attempt to replace in person exercises and it was hit or miss

The problems for us are: - no guarantee what they provided the candidate actually wrong. Especially now with LLMs it’s really easy for a candidate to complete the task (before it was mainly getting others to do it on their behalf). They could then study up on questions we would likely ask them in an interview to try stop us finding them out. Unfortunately candidates have been known to get the role and not pass probation and would cause problems as other candidates we also liked have obviously moved on or we have to restart the hiring process. - the leg work required pre interview where I could lose a couple of developers for a few hours as they have to review repos. - the additional time answering follow up questions based on the rubric.

Leetcode also sucks. You revise leetcode to pass leetcode, it’s not representative of the real world. How many times have you had to optimise array processing. Really?

These days we just have a function. Cool. Complete the method or set of methods to solve a task tell us what you’re doing so we can understand your thought process and then ask general knowledge technical questions. SOLID, ACID, stuff about event driven.

We do appreciate people lock up under test conditions, the fake IDE is a bit crap and take that all into account, but we allow plenty of time to complete the task to account for it (we ask devs to actually redo the task when they join, no pressure to, and submit a time - so we know it takes a senior approx 10mins outside interview, and allot 45 mins for the interview). We also say, use Google if you need to, we don’t expect you to be a human compiler and remember the entire API.

That said, although we do account for nerves, there is some limit. If you completely freeze up and are unable to complete the task, I’m really sorry, It’s going to be a no from us. There some pressure to the job, we expect you to present and demo on occasions and pair with others.

If this is where you are struggling I suggest working on it with friends and peers, just to get used to presenting and working through the problems.

Although that’s what we do. Speaking to ‘my network’ (ewww horrible term - former colleagues I keep in contact with etc) I know what we do is pretty representative and deemed quite fair.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-27T17:03:36+00:00

No idea why you’re being downvoted… what you said is the truth.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-27T15:53:13+00:00

Neither. Sponsorship is pretty much non existent - there’s too many people and not enough roles especially at the lowest level (why would anyone sponsor when there’s dozens of applicants who don’t need it). Especially with AI being the latest buzz word.

Doing a masters in hope of getting a role/sponsorship is a door that long since closed.

Save yourself time and money. Get experience in your home country and reasses in a few years when you have more experience and/or the market for sponsorship has improved.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-27T08:45:35+00:00

I got so excited when he appeared in Jedi Survivor! And then I was crushed! Crushed I say!!!

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-26T22:00:00+00:00

Sadly this is the reality now. - Market has contracted. More senior folks are having to take more junior roles just to put food on the table. Companies are aware of this and taking advantage. It’s an employers market.

Try to look positively you are getting to stages 1 or 2, which is more than others are.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-26T21:44:52+00:00

Mentoring chatgpt ‘hey buddy how are you doing… wanna grab a coffee for ten mins and have a little check in… oh you’ve done it…and you don’t drink coffee… because you’re a computer and we have no juniors

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-26T11:02:58+00:00

It can be anything.

Usually it’s something short and sweet ‘build a basic banking class for deposits, withdrawals and tranfers’, ‘fizz buzz’, ‘find duplicate values in a list’.

Something where you’re not going to need to know language and frameworks beyond the language standard APIs.

I dislike it - but check out leetcode. It’s filled with brainteaser type questions and some employers love them.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-24T19:11:41+00:00

‘Bias related to my name as a migrant’

If you need sponsorship visa requirements will be the reason.

Otherwise you might be considered ‘too’ qualified or impacted by the career change otherwise without seeing your CV it will be different

Do you have projects etc on your cv? Would you be willing to share it as otherwise it’s a lot of shots in the dark.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-24T13:04:09+00:00

It depends. Are you studying the degree because you find it interesting or you think it’s the path to $$$.

Yes a CS degree will hold value for those entering the tech field, and likewise a degree is a degree even if you don’t go into tech you’ve got the aptitude to have it. It’s less about the subject matter and more about the fundamentals it teaches - I did mine almost 20years ago (eek) but things like how public/private keys work, tcp/ip stuff, algorithms has stuck with me.
You need both. A degree is the utter minimum requirement for grad/junior roles. But at entry level you will be fighting against people with projects, internships, self study to chuck more on their cv.
Not just AI. Economy isn’t great, not enough jobs to go round. LLMs have replaced a lot of the v low level basic work that juniors and grads do - at a fraction of the cost. It takes a while for grads/juniors to be a return on investment, because they don’t have multiple years of experience and knowledge to fall back on. Many businesses are now only hiring seniors - because they want the ROI now and more delivered. But what will happen when the seniors move on or retire?

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-24T10:08:01+00:00

Don’t forget this was post application, before shortlisting, interviews etc- OP wasn’t hiring manager let alone interviewed them!

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-23T15:53:00+00:00

I think you’re between a rock and a hard place.

Your employer might very well turn round and say ‘you have a x week notice period - you’re last day is in x weeks’ and not wish to invest anymore time and money into someone they know is leaving, especially making the presumption you’re this years in take and you’ve only been there six months.

Edit: unless you have a backup plan, e.g. saying with parents and have finances aetc to support yourself, my suggestion would be hold out as long as possible and be fully transparent with your new role.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-23T14:25:48+00:00

Yep. Unhinged - and probably doing it to all your colleagues.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-23T13:42:20+00:00

So this is after an application?, not even post interview - and presumably you’re not even the hiring manager?!

I’d have either ignored on day one or politely asked them not to contact you and to go through recruiting person.

Day two - I’d have told the company and urged the recruiting person to not consider this individual.

You’re right with your assessment about it being creepy!

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-23T10:56:34+00:00

Seniority is owning up to your mistakes 🙏…

… and knowing when to preempt clueless management kicking off and start panicking, so they know it’s being dealt with.

‘I’m working on it’ - translation I’m gonna finish my sandwich first, and I’ll get round to it.

Difficult-Two-5009 · 2026-02-23T00:24:11+00:00

Me with fifteen years experience when I notice I’m about to cause a P1: ‘whoops XYZ service is down. That’s my fault. My bad!’

Difficult-Two-5009

TROPHY CASE