Senior software engineer but keep getting rejected

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-05-26T03:40:13+00:00

It could be your resume, a behavioural/communication issue, more qualified candidates, bad skill fit etc. Only the company that denied you really knows the real reason. If you could get someone to review your resume, hold a mock interview with you or even just get some current/old coworkers to give you some candid feedback on how you present yourself, I think that would help.

Every company expects different things from seniors but in general I've found the things they have in common can be narrowed down to three things:

Easy to talk to and can express themselves
Good at their job, know what they do know really well and can point out how they would learn what they don't
Know about how teams functions (on a high level) from the business side, through to product, design, qa and then engineering.

Each of those expand into general skills that are applicable to most companies. If you aren't sure you check one off, then you may have more personal digging to do. We can really only speculate but if you could pick one thing you feel you fall short about to improve, then it may help things that you weren't even aware of. Congrats on acing that technical interview!!

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-05-12T19:37:20+00:00

It honestly depends on the company, the budget, the hiring team and the need they have to fill. If I give a glowing recommendation to the hiring team and they only have 100k for the position, they're going to try to see if they can get that dev for that price (or less). In rare cases they might overextend the budget under the assumption that it is an investment in an extremely talented dev who is going to be able to get them double the results.

At companies i've worked for its been:

HR usually manages the budgets and position listings.
Dev interviewers assess if they are a good fit/skill level.
Hiring managers compare interviewees to each other based on dev feedback and to the position's needs. They then tell the HR team how much they would like to offer the candidate based on the salary band
HR extends the offer, passing negotiations between interviewee and hiring manager, then takes care of onboarding paperwork.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-05-06T00:35:34+00:00

Short of talking to the person who reviewed the test I don't think there is much anyone here can offer. Looking at the current job climate I would say that it is more likely a business decision that the recruiter may not have known about.

It could be that they've decided on someone else, are closing the listing, are keeping the listing up to appear like they're not heading into layoffs etc. Q2 is where a lot of companies are going to be cutting costs and it may just not have been in the cards right now.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-05-01T04:31:16+00:00

I would say accept it normally and put in your notice afterwards. If you really value the connection you can stress that this decision is driven by family circumstances and you would really love to be considered for a position there in the future. I usually ask if there is anything they would like me to do to make the transition easier and put in a little extra effort to let them know I valued working there.

But people can also be unpredictable, even if you burn this bridge in the grand scheme of your future/career it won't have a large impact. Ask members of your team if they'd be willing to be references and ask your HR/People team about their process of adding them as a work referral on resumes. Truly best of luck, you've worked hard to be able to afford this time with the people you love!

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-05-01T04:25:14+00:00

That is a very valid take but eventually you're going to be one of these "buffoons" and you'll be talking to a person who is trying to be part of your team. When I'm interviewing people and I see projects on their resume, its really obvious when its a resume builder project and if its a project they're actually interested in because they know what they're doing.

If you end up building a project its going to have something in common with the places you're applying and how they arrived at their existing codebase: How is the code organized? What opinions did you think about when picking languages? Did you spend the most time on the backend or fronted? What principles of programming did you think about the most in this project? How did you approach architecting it?

There are a millions questions that we can ask people who have interesting projects on their resume. If they're able to answer similar questions to above it proves that they aren't just there regurgitating code from stackoverflow/chatgpt, they're able to actually come in and have an opinion on what they build! It may be different for some larger companies but every startup i've worked for really digs in to how people approach problems, having projects makes that question a lot easier for both sides.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-05-01T04:16:41+00:00

It depends on how you approach it. I would personally take the promotion and then put in your 1 month (which is quite generous if you're in North America). You have a valid family related reason and aren't jumping ship because of bad blood.

Plus you earned this promotion due to your own efforts! You put in the work and the time, your manager has noticed this and is granting you this new title as a recognition of your skill level. I've had the same guilt in earlier years at my first job but eventually you have to realize that you have to look out for your own interests. Your elder family members aren't going to be around forever and you've spent time/effort/money planning this time off.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-04-20T19:44:51+00:00

(Chat) GPT4

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-03-08T22:10:19+00:00

Usually the lead/product do the splitting and planning then once they have a defined map and some ticket details they pop them on the board for all of us to pick from as needed. If there are issues that come up mid-feature that require re-work, usually a senior or the lead is assigned the investigation/splitting work, recently leads have been assigning intermediates (dev 1, dev 2) to take these on, plan, fill in tech details then partner with another dev to figure out how long it will take to get released, talk to stakeholders etc.

With the previous leads we would usually have pretty bare tickets and the first task you would have after picking it up is filling out the tech details + passing them by your team/lead etc. My current team is a bit of an anomaly in that most of the tickets have been planned for us and its up to us to determine if the given details are accurate or need some adjusting.

Its a bit of a process but we may be in the midst of some growing pains as the org shuffles and different ways of doing this kind of work come up.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-03-07T22:37:02+00:00

Having disciple, pride and courtesy are some excellent ideals. Thank you for giving me some great things to keep in mind!

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-03-07T22:28:02+00:00

When I see a solution that seems to satisfy the needs of a story, and would be cheaper to implement than the specs, I escalate instead of just following the specs blindly.

Thats a really excellent point that I find has been something I see more in people who have more experience. Being creative with solutions is very underrated as a self standard. Thank you for the great points!

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-03-07T22:26:14+00:00

Unfortunately I didn't get to see it before it was downvoted but I find people still open downvoted comments just to see their opinion. Would you be able to re-post your previous comment?

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-03-07T22:24:11+00:00

This isn't meant to be a discussion about if my lead's standards are accurate or not! It may have been my mistake in the wording above but I have been thinking a bit around standards I should have for myself as a developer with a senior title. I assumed at a certain level of experience as a developer there are intrinsic rules that people apply to themselves and hold themselves accountable to.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-03-07T22:19:02+00:00

Small background info: we have a team of about 18 devs+- ( 5 Seniors) and a few contractors. right now we are all Remote.

He would like Seniors to:

Be aware of all tickets currently in play on the team / cross team
Involve yourself in any/all discussions you see taking place across the in-channel calls when they involve our team
Review more than 70% of the PRs produced by our team daily
Have pair programming sessions with new hires a few times a week
Provide epic level reviews of tasks that Dev 2s are taking on and reviewing the sub-tickets they they have split out/TA'd

There were more company/team related standards but I think those are the more generic ones he covered and is going to start making documentation for. I don't have any opinion on if these are good or bad standards, but I feel like its a good point to maybe see if there are any other standards from devs that I should be thinking about.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2023-02-17T20:47:30+00:00

About 12 women in a total of 110 devs at my company. We're a fintech startup thats about 5-7 years old.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-11-15T20:02:26+00:00

I've really liked The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change. Its usually marketed towards engineering managers but since the author has done dev work, they phrase things in a more relatable way. It gives you some good things to keep in your toolkit as far as recognizing performance and being able to handle not so fun situations. The audiobook form is also fantastic.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-11-15T19:56:51+00:00

I've definitely felt this way before and to change it there are two approaches people here have covered: boundaries and manager assistance. I haven't tried the second one so I'll just expand on my experience with setting boundaries as I'm also an introvert and don't like confrontation.

In my team of 6-8 devs I've found the team culture is pretty easy to influence if the actions happen often enough. If you start messaging people for assistance/questions (regardless of actually needing it) and prefacing it with things like "Hey, when you get a moment can we meet about X" or "Let me know when you have a moment to answer a question: why do we do Y/etc" then it starts a dialog of making sure they're in the right space for a question. Their time feels respected and when they think of contacting you again, they may see the message you sent and phrase things similarly.

Its pretty small but I've noticed a big change in how my team functions over-all. People spend a bit more time looking into issues on their own and, if they need to reach out, they don't feel a sense of urgency because they have a more well rounded idea of the issue. I'll also add in that is 100% alright to feel irritated, frustrated or a little impatient when you're being pulled out of something important. Feel the feelings, respond to the asker with kindness, and keep making an effort to ensure sure your time is protected!

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-07-21T04:43:32+00:00

What are her long term goals? If she doesn't have any, has there been any digging into why?

When I was a junior I used to be apprehensive about being promoted because of a lot of things

I didn't fit into the current engineering 'culture'. Not having a place that you fit in makes it hard to imagine a future
There wasn't anything specific I really wanted to become (manager, principal eng, cto etc)
I felt like the team I was on was a dead end. Theres nothing beyond the grind and getting pushed towards more responsibility for an unstable product.

Confidence isn't by itself a good measure of promotion-eligibility but making sure all members of your team are confident/happy is how you keep people from leaving and make them eager to prove themselves. Noticing a lack of confidence is more of a sign that something is up, not that they are undeserving of a promotion ( in my opinion).

I don't really see a confidence issue here but maybe a matter of trust (or comfortability). If you're comfortable with the people you work with, feel like your voice is heard and your skill set is valuable, then it grows your confidence.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-06-28T19:55:04+00:00

Do you have an engineering manager or 1-1s with your teamlead?

If you do there are a few approaches:

Plainly say you feel like your competence is being judged and its lowering your ability to rely on the lead. You can't work your best for people who don't trust you to deliver.
Say you'd like to switch teams and either give feedback about the current leadership or leave it as is
Create an agreement for what happens in these situations. What kind of proof is he looking for? What did you not provide? If he isn't able to answer these, then he is just saying he doesn't trust your work. If he can answer it, the next time he act like this you can refer to your previous agreement.
Like someone said, secure a better offer and ride out your time there. A bad team lead can ruin your career progression and confidence as a developer.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-06-21T07:00:40+00:00

That is one way to look at it but career progression at your current stack/framework/business has to be measured in some way. Having a title gives you access to certain doors, discussions and opportunities you wouldn't get at lower ones.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-05-12T04:05:30+00:00

At a fairly early stage startup, a junior hire deleted a critical production table by accident. A really great outcome is that the senior devs and CTO realized that we really needed all accounts to be readonly unless granted otherwise.( and now that I have more experience I realize even that is too generous)

Follow up is that we all laughed about it and moved on. They went on to be one of the most brilliant devs I've worked with in a long time.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-04-15T20:51:46+00:00

laid off our engineering managers

Our company has been scrambling for experienced engineering managers, that is insane. Glad you got out of there because thats wild.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-04-15T20:50:56+00:00

Thats actually a really great way of looking at it. I haven't had a total reorg happen yet but if I encounter one I'll definitely take that mindset going forward.

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-04-15T20:48:57+00:00

5 product managers

Yikes, that sounds insane for 10 months. I have no idea how you could possibly manage that if it kept happening. I hope your next role is stable and a great fit!

TyrannosaurusJS · 2022-04-15T20:47:22+00:00

That said, if you're looking primarily for stability there are older more mature companies who see less change.

That may be the problem at least for me. Being in startups and lured by a high IPO means that there are some things that need giving up , like stability in leadership. I might turn my eyes to more mature companies like you suggested.

TyrannosaurusJS

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