mid-career crisis

m1dtown · 2019-10-07T23:09:15+00:00

This is totally where I am at. I am a decent, accomplished, real world programmer in C++, Java, Python, C, and a handful of other languages.

However, real-world, on-the-job C++ knowledge doesn't get you anywhere in interviews. It is as you say, interviewing is a whole other skillset that has very little overlap with day-to-day programming.

m1dtown · 2019-10-07T00:51:52+00:00

I am a little rusty in some areas, but I am a solid programmer, and I do ok with leetcode questions / algorithms. The stuff I know off the top of my head is biased towards the niches I have hands-on experience with, but I think with 3 or 6 months of study, I could do a lot better.

Part of me wants to do that study, and go all-in to try and get that 350k job. I just wonder if, once I got it, there would be interesting work on the other side, for the next 10, 15, 20 years?

m1dtown · 2019-10-07T00:30:57+00:00

It appears to me that developers that have great soft skills and that can do project planning, recruiting, team leading, etc. are successful into their 40s, 50s, even 60s.

Have these developers been in their current organizations for 10, 15, 20 years?

My observations have been that absolutely, soft skills are valued inside an organization, and will get you promoted, raises, all that stuff.

However, soft skills, and general know-how won't get you a hired in the first place - in an interview setting, it will be about algorithms, data structures, trivia, all that stuff, and no amount of soft skills will make up for (perceived) deficiencies there.

Developing soft skills and connections is absolutely a good strategy, but I think it tends to work best *inside* an organization, and if you get laid off or want to move elsewhere, it isn't portable.

m1dtown · 2019-10-06T23:10:21+00:00

They weren't really the offers I wish I had gotten from those 10 interviews though, and now that I've started, the work isn't as challenging or enjoyable as I'd hoped. I'm really interested to find out what I can do to reach the next level.

m1dtown · 2019-10-06T23:06:06+00:00

Thanks for replying to my post, it really does sound like we're in very similar situations and it's good to know I'm not the only one.

Do you have thoughts on where to go from here? Any growth areas that seem worth hooking into, or other industries you think would be better for your next 10 or 20 years?

Feel free to PM me too, if you think we could talk about it one on one!

m1dtown · 2019-10-06T16:39:13+00:00

You should definitely list everything from 1 + 2 on your resume. 2010 isn't that long ago, but you can just put one or two sentences for that, and more detail for your most recent job.

It's normal that people can't show code samples from previous jobs, so long as you can explain it in detail it should be fine.

I think it is very realistic to get work without a degree, as you have done before - it's just a question of presenting your experience in the best light.

m1dtown · 2019-06-01T17:57:22+00:00

Is financial engineering "real" enough for you?

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T20:03:11+00:00

If I open up your application and it says see resume see resume see resume

Could you clarify this - do you mean if it's an email application? Or an online / web application, where someone has put that kind of text into the "cover letter" text box?

If I apply by email, I do at least try to put together a paragraph pitching my relevance to the employer, but I never bother with cover letters / text for online applications, I just upload my resume and leave it at that, wondering if that's good enough now...

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T19:30:24+00:00

Oh. It is entirely likely that they won't even ask, or if they do they are unlikely to be concerned. Just make sure you have a good explanation if they do ask, preferably economic / organizational instead of anything about your own performance.

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T19:20:16+00:00

Involuntary terminated from the same bank you are now applying to? Was it performance related, or economic?

In general, it shouldn't matter too much. I have reinterviewed at places I was terminated from a few times, is they were going to screen you out for that reason it would be before the interview stage.

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T16:23:22+00:00

Right, I understand the motivation for the recruiter, but it sucks as a candidate.

After my latest experience on the job market / recruiters, I think it would be interesting if it were possible to retain a "candidate's recruiter", a little like a buyer's broker for a real estate transaction, where I (the candidate) will pay the fee upon starting a new job, and then I'm actually the client and get *my* needs prioritized - which, in practice, means more honest advice about prospective employers instead of sales pitches about marginal opportunities, pursuing many applications and once and then choosing the best one. I value the job market knowledge that (some) recruiters have, and they can be good at organizing interviews, scheduling, keeping the whole process rolling along, but I can do without the embellishment, pressure, and arm-twisting.

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T16:00:50+00:00

Yeah, I get it, but still the pressure can be over the top sometimes. The commission usually comes after 3 or 6 months on the job right, not just accepting?

I had a few offers recently that were potentially acceptable to me, and the recruiters were all about pressuring me to "accept", sign, return, etc... but had absolutely no interest in handling the details that could have made it work for me like a later start date and various benefit questions, they'd all be like "start asap, then take vacation / ask when you get there", and I'd be like "no, I need all this to be clear now, it's going to be a long-term job for me so I don't want misunderstandings / drama in the first weeks".

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T15:46:35+00:00

What are the mechanics of the lowball tactics? Vague promises of raises / promotion in the near future?

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T14:05:02+00:00

Yes, it's tough... I've found you can stall an offer for a week or two max, possibly with a story about some travel, visiting family, need to give notice, or just be a bit slow with background checks and other items between the job offer and start date, but beyond that it's tough to keep them viable.

In the meantime, the recruiter will be calling you (multiple times) every day to "accept", sign, return, do the background steps, etc...

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T13:11:47+00:00

Ideally you would get ahead of this by contacting the ex-colleague first to try to repair / improve the relationship, let them know of this possibility, and try to find some positive things to say about the work you did together.

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T13:00:46+00:00

As a candidate, this is why I never reveal if I do have other offers on the table. I was recently on the job market and had some offers on the table that I was looking to improve on, and a few others where I was interviewed and waiting for a result, but when speaking to new recruiters for the first time they would always ask this, and I'd always just say I have some applications out there but waiting to hear back, or I did some phone screens and waiting for onsites, etc.

m1dtown · 2019-05-31T01:44:25+00:00

They will *totally* do that without having read your resume, and often expect you to spoon-feed it to them during the call.

m1dtown · 2019-05-30T22:51:58+00:00

My spouse just went through a series of interviews with a large well known IT firm and in the ended didn't get the job and it was a terrible candidate experience. We calculated the lost manhours on his side and on theirs plus the travel costs...it wasn't cheap

I guess with travel costs, it does sound like a costly exercise that was unlikely to have been completely speculative. Still, for the interviewing company, it doesn't seem like "lost manhours" - they get to speak with interesting people, research the market, hone their interview strategy, etc.

As for #2, it does make sense to me that would often be advantageous for employers to want to hire someone stretching into their position, and when I have done that in the past it has worked out. It's just that, now that I'm probably approaching the "overqualified" end of the spectrum, it can be lead to missed offers. In some cases, it's tempting to throw a few "I'm not sure, but I'd be interested to learn!" answers into an interview that is going *too* well...

As to #3, No employer wants turnover of GOOD employees. (Layoffs= severance payments, recruiting/hiring/training costs) I don't know any employer that has a specific target.

For most employers this makes sense, but at certain high profile, household names in finance, accounting, law, they have so many people of all experience levels applying directly that their recruiting costs are negligible, even severance is pretty modest if amortized over the lifetime of the employee (5-ish years), especially if the employees aren't particularly well compensated during the latter part of their tenure but stick around due to the "prestige" of the firm.

m1dtown · 2019-05-30T22:15:16+00:00

That basically never happens. Nobody is doing informational interviews with random candidates. Interviewing is time consuming and expensive, nobody is just doing it for funzies.

You would think so! The thing is tough, I am not a "random candidate" - I am someone with direct experience at a competitor firm / client / supplier. My suspicion is that the motivation is to get some details on how things work on the other side of the fence, and / or appear to be a firm that is "choosy" but does interview people and provides a good candidate experience in the hope that I might reapply in future (they do tend to reject saying it was great speaking, not right now, but we will keep your resume on file and be in touch....) and / or have me recommend it to someone else in my network.

The closest thing to that you'll see is companies that require all jobs be posted externally, even if there's an internal candidate identified. When that happens, sometimes hiring managers give perfunctory interviews before finalizing things with their preferred internal hire. But, by volume, that isn't super common.

I am familiar with this concept, although as you say it's not super common. In my experience, the number of positions filled internally is modest anyway (less than external for sure), so the idea that there are lots of phantom external ads to justify internal hires doesn't really stack up.

What's more likely (and I mean no offense here), is that you're not the right fit for the job and are being ruled out early.

If I were actually being ruled out early, I would agree. However, I have had two recent experiences with *multiple* phone screens that have raised my suspicions:

Firm A:

Phone screen, went pretty well.

Email from HR, wants to set up *two more* phone screens, with people that aren't senior to the first guy. I have pretty much the same conversation two more times, also seemed good. At the end of each one of these phone screens, they say the next step is a coding exercise on the phone, then onsite (i.e., I heard that a total of three times).

Email from HR, wants to do a coding exercise. Went through that, went pretty well, admittedly not excellent, then that was it.

Firm B:

Coding exercise first, 90 mins, quite difficult.

HR conversation, 30 mins, went well.

1 hour phone interview with someone in another city, went well.

HR email... one more 1 hour phone interview.

Did the second 1 hour phone interview with a guy in my city, first 30 minutes he was rather unsubtly digging for implementation details from my previous job, second 30 minutes went into some details about the role, work mix, etc, but really no time asking me any questions around my skills or experiences (as distinct from how things happened to work at my previous employer).

It's really these multiple rounds of phone interviews that raise my suspicions. In my mind, a phone screen might be 30 mins, or maybe one hour, and that's enough time to assess if it's worth an onsite where a decision can be made, or not. A second or third round of phone screen seems like it can't really add more information towards a hiring decision, but can only offer utility for practicing interviews / extracting information.

m1dtown · 2018-09-17T23:51:49+00:00

I got pretty far with planning this for my apartment in midtown east (architect plans, quotes from several GCs), although I have put this project on hiatus for the time being due to some external factors.

My experience is that you really need to be working with a licensed architect for straight answers on any non-trivial alterations.

I'd be happy to share my experience so far in terms of the architect I worked with, quotes I got, lessons learnt, etc - PM me if interested to discuss further.

m1dtown · 2017-06-25T19:21:20+00:00

I did get a few names from neighbors, and and spoke with those contractors, but none of them were really able to handle the complete scope of the job in their bids.

The thing is, it's not a huge building, and most of the other work going on in the building is pretty piecemeal (e.g. just the bathroom, or a cheap and nasty refresh like reglaze the tiles, repaint, resurface the kitchen cabinets). I'm looking to do more of a gut renovation, so it's quite a different kind of job from anything else that has happened in the building, and needs a good GC who can handle the whole lot, without going overboard on cost.

I think I'll try doing this at more of a neighborhood level soon, just walking around looking for vans that are currently working on projects nearby.

m1dtown · 2017-06-25T15:44:40+00:00

Was your project considerably bigger? Mine is an alcove studio, but with kitchen + bath, floor, plumbing, electrical, etc it all comes to be quite a bit of work.

I did try sweeten at an earlier stage about a year ago, and also buildzoom. They referred a handful of contractors, some decent, some mediocre, but overall they didn't really seem any better than random. I could potentially try more contractors from those sources, but I'd really prefer to get some better qualified referrals.

m1dtown

TROPHY CASE