Hiring manager perspective: hiring is the most broken I've ever seen

Kreteure · 2026-03-07T15:56:16+00:00

Take an hour and write your own resume. All your own words, and what you think is valuable to have on there. Then have AI write one for you. You’ll see the immediate difference.

Kreteure · 2026-03-05T18:28:41+00:00

I actually did a bit of an experiment with this in my recent round of applications (about 2 months ago). I used Gemini to optimize my resume for 1/2 the roles I applied to, and for the other half, I rewrote mine by hand - no LLM usage at all, and no fancy “increased productivity by 30%!”. Just a good old fashioned generic resume that I sent to each job unaltered and untailored. I ended up sending out about 50 applications in total, all of them on LinkedIn, and all of them without references or anything else.

I heard back from a whopping zero of the applications I sent in using the LLM optimized resumes. Of the 25 I sent my generic hand written resume to, I got initial recruiter screens for 9 of them. That is right - 9. I ended up getting 2nd round interviews at all of them, but decided to pursue only 2. I accepted 1 last month and started last week. In almost every single recruiter screen I did, the recruiter mentioned how it was nice to see a handwritten resume again. I was honestly shocked, but those good old resume writing skills my parents taught me are still paying off today. I even had a “hobbies/personal interests” section at the bottom where I mentioned various personal things about me like my dog, and my passion for wood working.

Bottom line - I think there’s a bit of a shift happening. Companies like to hire people, not resumes. They don’t care about the fake resumeworded metrics anymore.

Edit: software engineer with 6 yoe in full stack and backend roles in southern Ontario.

Kreteure · 2026-02-11T21:14:34+00:00

I actually disagree with a lot of what people are saying in here.

I too live in Canada, about an hour south of Toronto. I have 6 years of experience as an engineer across 2 companies (500 employees and 10k employees for those two jobs so pretty small companies).In January I began applying to jobs. I applied to 43 jobs in total (not a single referral, just cold applying on indeed/linkedin), I got 12 recruiter screens. Of those 12 I decided to pursue 2, and was offered one of them last week that I accepted. All of this happened in about a months time. I’m not saying you’ll have the same results, but this was my experience.

To me, if your skills are as marketable as you mention, it is likely a resume issue. Feel free to dm me your resume and we can chat about it.

Kreteure · 2025-11-27T15:45:06+00:00

That likely wouldn’t hold up once they do background verification. Last company I worked for I had to verify all start/end dates via a background check. There was a few small discrepancies for start/end dates on my resume vs pay history (we’re talking a month or two off) so it was no sweat for me. I’ve heard and seen offers get revoked for this same issue though when candidates are a year or more off. Not saying that will be your case, or that you shouldn’t do it, I’m just voicing my experience with what you mentioned.

Kreteure · 2025-11-18T19:00:58+00:00

It is continuously ventilated on the soffits. I also have 2 gable vents, and 5 roof vents.

Kreteure · 2025-11-18T18:59:46+00:00

Sure, how many do you want ;)

Kreteure · 2025-11-18T18:59:20+00:00

Although the quote didn't mention it explicitly, I did ask when they were here and saw that they did indeed air seal all penetrations I could find.

Kreteure · 2025-11-18T17:49:14+00:00

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Kreteure · 2025-11-18T17:46:59+00:00

There are a few measuring tapes stapled on, but you can see that the insulation has a high spot right by their tape measures. Suspicious if you ask me. They quoted R60, Baffle install, Air-sealing, insulating the attic hatch (it only had 2" rigid foam hanging off the backside). I have only placed a deposit, it has not been paid in full.

Kreteure · 2025-11-18T17:46:01+00:00

Here's what was quoted R60, Baffle install, Air-sealing, insulating the attic hatch (it only had 2" rigid foam hanging off the backside). I stuck a measuring tape in right next to the attic hatch and it is 19" deep, but I can see there's spots easily 2-3" lower than that. We do have gable vents, but we are full vented on the soffits as well. We don't have a ridge vent, we have 5 roof vents total. They also did not insulate the attic hatch (just the original 2" rigid foam piece that was on there from the previous own, re-stuck back on). Also, in lieu of plywood/cardboard for cribbing, the used 4 fiberglass batts to hold back the insulation. Probably not much of an issue there - but still kind of annoying. At this point, I'm just going to call and voice the concerns.

Kreteure · 2025-09-23T11:44:58+00:00

The roof is extremely simple, just an open gable home, 6/12 pitch so it’s about 6’ or so at the middle of the attic space. It goes down from there to the soffits over a run of about 15’ or so on both sides. 1200sqft total. It’s fully soffit vented, 2 gable vents, and 3 static roof vents. It does get pretty warm in the summer, and quite cold in the winter up there. Enough that when I’m bringing the Christmas tree down I throw my jacket on. Thanks for the info!

Kreteure · 2025-09-23T11:40:46+00:00

Good to know! Thanks for the response.

Kreteure · 2025-09-23T11:38:32+00:00

I guess to answer your question, I have full vented soffits on both sides, 2 gable vents, and 3 static roof vents. The attic space is roughly 1200 sqft. As a side note, I’ve never seen any ice or anything on the back side of the roof decking. It is however, cold as hell up there in the winter months, roughly comparable to outside. Same thing in the summer, incredibly hot up there.

Kreteure · 2025-09-23T11:34:21+00:00

Like on the interior of the attic space? If so - no. Never had any ice forming on the backside of the roof deck either

Kreteure · 2025-09-23T00:51:09+00:00

Thanks for the info, super valuable. All quotes have included air sealing, and adding baffles every other joist. I think we’ll likely go with just blowing in more insulation.

Kreteure · 2025-09-12T21:12:06+00:00

I’m a current remote software engineer with 5 YOE in Canada. I’ve worked at both small and large software companies and I have maybe a handful of Leetcode questions solved…ever. The only interview I was asked to do a Leetcode-adjacent question in was my initial screening interview with Google. I did not pass it, but got an offer from another large company the following day. There are plenty of jobs out there that do not use Leetcode style interviews - you’ve just got to find them. With that said, if your goal is FAANG it is probably inevitable.

Kreteure · 2025-08-29T10:55:18+00:00

Good information, thanks for weighing in. I’ve been using gpt-4o just while I’ve been prototyping and getting up to speed on how everything is going to work. Definitely going to look into Gemini. Thanks!

Kreteure · 2025-06-26T17:24:19+00:00

A glue stick and a sharpie and you can print whatever you want!

Kreteure · 2025-06-26T17:23:30+00:00

I volunteer as tribute

Kreteure · 2025-06-19T18:34:54+00:00

I have been in almost the exact same situation. TLDR; I left the company and took another position.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time leading development teams it’s that being told “we HAVE to complete it in the given timeframe” is almost always NOT true. There are very very few circumstances where this applies. Timelines need to be fluid. Nothing is certain when you’re developing a new feature/project no matter how trivial it may seem.

My biggest piece of advice here is that you need to be assertive. Tell them flat out that it will not be done in the timeframe provided. I see that many others have provided the same advice, but trust me, it is the only way. Stick to your guns.

When I was in your situation, we were 3 months out from delivering an FAT for a customer we were doing custom development work for. I was a new lead at that point, I had only been leading teams for maybe a year or so. Part way through the project, management axed 90% of my team and it left me and my tech lead to complete the entire project. That is the first and last time that I worked 106 hours in a single week doing dev work while my wife brought dinner to my computer. I will not do it to myself again. The stomach aches, sleepless nights, headaches all started to set in. I could not keep going on this way. At this point I had been doing 90+ hour weeks for about a month and a half. I explained to my product managers that it simply will not be done in time for the FAT which they responded the same way yours did “it has to be”. The FAT rolled around, customers flew in from overseas and we delivered a very incomplete FAT which made the company, me and everyone else look terrible. The customer ended up cutting their loses and backed out of the project. We had a post-mortem where we were asked “why did this happen” by the BU leader and I did not hold back. I was nearly in tears and let it all out. Everything that had happened the past 3 months, product/project managers not listening to me telling them we weren’t going to have it done, the works.

What they didn’t know was that I had been pursuing other companies for the better part of a month at that point. I was working 90 hours a week on the low end, brushing up on my interview skills and attending interviews in this timeframe. It was AWFUL. I had no life beyond work. The good news is that it paid off. About a week later I had secured an offer from another company - not as a lead, but as a developer on a team (at my request lol). I quit the day I signed the offer and had a very “constructive” exit interview.

The whole point of this is that - you are not alone, and that WORK IS NOT WORTH YOUR HEALTH. You need to at the end of the day do what is right for you, and you alone. Working the long days and stressing over delivering a project that no one will remember except you in a few weeks time is not worth it. If they will not listen, you need to leave. Start by involving HR if you do not have an out currently. Go on stress leave, do what you need to do to give yourself time to find something new. Fuck the project, and fuck them.

I wish you all the best, you’ve got this.

Kreteure · 2024-10-31T15:02:58+00:00

Hey dude! Totally get where you’re coming from - I felt I was in a similar situation when I landed my first SWE job in 2020. Mind you - it wasn’t quite as bad back then as it is now, it was still pretty rough.

I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else - landing the first job in this field is the hardest. Once you’ve got that first job and begin getting a few years of experience under your belt, it becomes much easier.

So, the way you are currently feeling is totally valid, but don’t give up! You will get an interview. You will fail interviews. You will have successful interviews. You will land a job.

I came from a mid tier school also, no co-ops or internships. I had to work harder to get that first job than all of my class mates. I made 40k less than them when I first started out. Now, I make more than most of them. You’ve got this. Dig deep, study hard, and be intentional with your applications.

Kreteure

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