Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college.
Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them.
Most of the people you will interact with in the (corporate) world have no understanding of their own understanding, and are operating in unknown unknown territory. Being confident, demonstrating competence in something jointly known/unknown or known/known helps a ton.
That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce.
It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.
Every job I’ve ever gotten has been cold apply, with no degree except a GED high school diploma equivalent. You can certainly get jobs through cold apply, I get a job offer for basically every job that gets to the interview, even when I hadn’t worked as a dev I had two job offers I had to pick from. I like to think my passion, knowledge, and genuine interest shines through in my cover letters and my interviews.
When did you last do that? I’ve heard from multiple friends that the job market has completely collapsed in the last couple of years & that it’s much tougher than in the past.
Cold applying works reasonably well IME, but you have to be able to nail the interviews for it to make sense. I'm great at what I do, I only apply to jobs which should be a good fit, and I still only get interviews 1-2% of the time. I then get offers 95% of the time, which keeps the process manageable.
I've gotten 3/4 of my tech jobs through cold applying though [0], and been offered many, many more. I know it's possible.
Ok that note, I love my current job, and I would've never found anything like it through my network. Cold applying was a literal game-changer in that regard.
[0] One was through Google Foo Bar, and one was through Codefights (now Codesignal or something), so those were slightly more tailored than cold applying.
My current job was done via a connection, but every previous job has been through spamming my resume to every job I'm even remotely qualified for and/or I find interesting.
I have a degree now, but I dropped out of college the first time around, and so I didn't have any connections in the software industry, or anywhere really. When I dropped out, I assumed any desk job career was out the window. I applied to Aldi, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell in one day (driving and applying in person).
On a lark, and almost as a joke to myself, I applied to exactly one software job from an ad on Craigslist, and they were the only ones who actually got back to me, thus jumpstarting my software career. I've had a lot of jobs in a lot of different places, and despite knowing lots of interesting people I've only managed to convert that to a job one time.
I have no idea how people use friendly connections to get jobs.
That's where the author is, and it's fine. IMO, these people tend to be better represented online, because getting a job through connections/influence/visibility is necessarily going to be louder than clicking submit on a form.
Same. Much more difficult as an immigrant because you have to prove a lot more than other candidates but I have always managed to get a job with cold-applications, zero referrals, which even I find interesting because I dozens of people at different companies, have thousands of followers on LinkedIn, and am super active in local meetups as an organizer, which means lots of locals know me, at least by name, but still no good referrals whenever I apply for a job, which is why I always resort to cold apply.
> I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships
FYI cold-applying to bigtech (e.g., FAANG) is like throwing your application away. Pro-tip: ping people on LinkedIn and ask for a referral. If you're a decent candidate they'll happily do it because there's a O(1k) referral/hiring bonus at all of these companies.
My advice is: Don’t let someone else control your life.
Switch occupation every 2 years, even if you find a great environment. Don’t chase, for what you need must come to you.
Understand no one can give you the answers you seek; you have to live it.
I'm sorry to hate but it's extremely rich to write
> Do not send me anything longer than you would send to a crush. Some people email me six-paragraph essays about the time they saved a cat from a tree
...in a rambling piece that is not written with much consideration for the reader. I know this is just a blog post, ostensibly written for the author's younger sister, but if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from, he should make some effort to make his ideas digestible. I would suggest he include some transitions between ideas, bother to do some research to back up his claims instead of e.g. referring vaguely to an experiment he heard of supposedly involving "lucky" and "unlucky" people (truly sounds like science).
And for the love of God don't tell me right off the bat that you assume I'm going to keep reading, let alone read closely enough to "notice" anything about your writing. Yuck
Finally, while I know it's popular in Silicon Valley/coastal tech types to use the language of agency to justify being an uncharitable dick to people around you, the spirit of this particular stanza is helpful to deploy only in a small number of settings, generally low complexity environments where the stakes are low and there's a lack of psychological safety, and you desperately need the paycheck.
In any event the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing his experience working in coastal tech. Do yourself a favor and find other role models
>... if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from...
>... the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing...
The author clearly doesn't want to be someone most people take advice from, and admitted that the piece wouldn't be well written, lack nuance, and largely were just things that worked for them, not anybody else. I don't know how one could possibly take this so seriously when they make it very clear up front:
>I'm not really qualified to give advice.
>Don't read this if you are seeking a nuanced perspective.
>These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.
My interpretation of the newspaper image-counting experiment is quite different from that of the author.
My view is that unlucky people don't trust the system (for a good reason) so they don't trust the text; given the nature of the experiment, it is reasonable that they would think the text is a trap to mislead them. It actually mirrors reality perfectly because most people are constantly misled about everything... But a few lucky 'chosen' people are not. In terms of the experiment it would be like showing unlucky people text which shows an incorrect number and the lucky people would see text showing the correct number. That's what's actually happening in real life.
What lucky people don't understand is that merely surviving, without receiving special treatment, is actually very difficult and it requires constantly jumping over all sorts of hurdles and deceptions and you can't afford trust third-party information because every time you did, you ended up losing everything or wasting years of your life. Lucky people are wrong to trust third-party information. They only learn how wrong they were when they stop receiving special treatment; then reality comes as a shock!
What is shown to the majority is what the media wants to show them. The media's purpose is to mislead people. Only a small handful of people are actually lucky enough to have mentors who will tell them "The media is misleading, I know because I influence the media; here is reality: ..."
Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?
If yes, the question is why? What came first? Their luck or their perspective? Maybe a couple instances of things working out tips the scales early in life!
> Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?
Optimism vs pessimism is basically only a valid framing in very neutral times. If things really are significantly tilted towards up or down, then you either notice that or you don't, and only framing that makes sense is realism vs confusion/delusion
I'm pretty sure the luck came first because optimism/pessimism is a learned trait.
I say this as someone who considers themselves "Optimistic by nature, pessimistic by experience."
I was born in lucky circumstances but that luck turned in my teens due to factors outside of my control. I have seen firsthand how it works.
Even now, I constantly have to catch myself and force myself to think pessimistically... And my pessimistic projections are usually right or sometimes not pessimistic enough.
But I know I'm a natural optimist by the fact that I don't give up. I've built so much software and startups over the years; most of them I'm still running on the side and keeping up to date even though I know consciously that there is zero chance they will succeed. Deep down I have a deep optimism that something will change and all the opportunities will come at once. Consciously, I know it is delusional but I'm fundamentally motivated by emotions, not thoughts.
It's a weird feeling having built products that work very similarly to (or better than) other products which rake in millions of dollars but not being able to find a single customer due to all sorts of weird contrived socio-political reasons.
> These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.
It's interesting the author chose to wrote this as "advice" given his awareness of this. There are a number of ways he could have shared this information without presenting it as "advice."
> I've never gotten a job by applying to it. It's always been referrals or someone reaching out to me. So honestly, my resume is shit compared to my peers.
> How to Get a Job
Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college.
Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them.
Most of the people you will interact with in the (corporate) world have no understanding of their own understanding, and are operating in unknown unknown territory. Being confident, demonstrating competence in something jointly known/unknown or known/known helps a ton.
That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce.
It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.
Every job I’ve ever gotten has been cold apply, with no degree except a GED high school diploma equivalent. You can certainly get jobs through cold apply, I get a job offer for basically every job that gets to the interview, even when I hadn’t worked as a dev I had two job offers I had to pick from. I like to think my passion, knowledge, and genuine interest shines through in my cover letters and my interviews.
When did you last do that? I’ve heard from multiple friends that the job market has completely collapsed in the last couple of years & that it’s much tougher than in the past.
Cold applying works reasonably well IME, but you have to be able to nail the interviews for it to make sense. I'm great at what I do, I only apply to jobs which should be a good fit, and I still only get interviews 1-2% of the time. I then get offers 95% of the time, which keeps the process manageable.
I've gotten 3/4 of my tech jobs through cold applying though [0], and been offered many, many more. I know it's possible.
Ok that note, I love my current job, and I would've never found anything like it through my network. Cold applying was a literal game-changer in that regard.
[0] One was through Google Foo Bar, and one was through Codefights (now Codesignal or something), so those were slightly more tailored than cold applying.
And I am exactly the opposite - aside from my first job out of university 10 years ago I have gotten every job since through connections
My current job was done via a connection, but every previous job has been through spamming my resume to every job I'm even remotely qualified for and/or I find interesting.
I have a degree now, but I dropped out of college the first time around, and so I didn't have any connections in the software industry, or anywhere really. When I dropped out, I assumed any desk job career was out the window. I applied to Aldi, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell in one day (driving and applying in person).
On a lark, and almost as a joke to myself, I applied to exactly one software job from an ad on Craigslist, and they were the only ones who actually got back to me, thus jumpstarting my software career. I've had a lot of jobs in a lot of different places, and despite knowing lots of interesting people I've only managed to convert that to a job one time.
I have no idea how people use friendly connections to get jobs.
That's where the author is, and it's fine. IMO, these people tend to be better represented online, because getting a job through connections/influence/visibility is necessarily going to be louder than clicking submit on a form.
Same. Much more difficult as an immigrant because you have to prove a lot more than other candidates but I have always managed to get a job with cold-applications, zero referrals, which even I find interesting because I dozens of people at different companies, have thousands of followers on LinkedIn, and am super active in local meetups as an organizer, which means lots of locals know me, at least by name, but still no good referrals whenever I apply for a job, which is why I always resort to cold apply.
> I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships
FYI cold-applying to bigtech (e.g., FAANG) is like throwing your application away. Pro-tip: ping people on LinkedIn and ask for a referral. If you're a decent candidate they'll happily do it because there's a O(1k) referral/hiring bonus at all of these companies.
Does that include internships as well or regular positions only?
Popular twice in 2024
(148 points, 72 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38902596
(155 points, 62 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39926081
My advice is: Don’t let someone else control your life. Switch occupation every 2 years, even if you find a great environment. Don’t chase, for what you need must come to you. Understand no one can give you the answers you seek; you have to live it.
I like the old parts of this piece.
Seems like the new additions are all about money as the goal. Oh well.
I'm sorry to hate but it's extremely rich to write
> Do not send me anything longer than you would send to a crush. Some people email me six-paragraph essays about the time they saved a cat from a tree
...in a rambling piece that is not written with much consideration for the reader. I know this is just a blog post, ostensibly written for the author's younger sister, but if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from, he should make some effort to make his ideas digestible. I would suggest he include some transitions between ideas, bother to do some research to back up his claims instead of e.g. referring vaguely to an experiment he heard of supposedly involving "lucky" and "unlucky" people (truly sounds like science).
And for the love of God don't tell me right off the bat that you assume I'm going to keep reading, let alone read closely enough to "notice" anything about your writing. Yuck
Finally, while I know it's popular in Silicon Valley/coastal tech types to use the language of agency to justify being an uncharitable dick to people around you, the spirit of this particular stanza is helpful to deploy only in a small number of settings, generally low complexity environments where the stakes are low and there's a lack of psychological safety, and you desperately need the paycheck.
In any event the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing his experience working in coastal tech. Do yourself a favor and find other role models
>... if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from...
>... the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing...
The author clearly doesn't want to be someone most people take advice from, and admitted that the piece wouldn't be well written, lack nuance, and largely were just things that worked for them, not anybody else. I don't know how one could possibly take this so seriously when they make it very clear up front:
>I'm not really qualified to give advice.
>Don't read this if you are seeking a nuanced perspective.
>These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.
My interpretation of the newspaper image-counting experiment is quite different from that of the author.
My view is that unlucky people don't trust the system (for a good reason) so they don't trust the text; given the nature of the experiment, it is reasonable that they would think the text is a trap to mislead them. It actually mirrors reality perfectly because most people are constantly misled about everything... But a few lucky 'chosen' people are not. In terms of the experiment it would be like showing unlucky people text which shows an incorrect number and the lucky people would see text showing the correct number. That's what's actually happening in real life.
What lucky people don't understand is that merely surviving, without receiving special treatment, is actually very difficult and it requires constantly jumping over all sorts of hurdles and deceptions and you can't afford trust third-party information because every time you did, you ended up losing everything or wasting years of your life. Lucky people are wrong to trust third-party information. They only learn how wrong they were when they stop receiving special treatment; then reality comes as a shock!
What is shown to the majority is what the media wants to show them. The media's purpose is to mislead people. Only a small handful of people are actually lucky enough to have mentors who will tell them "The media is misleading, I know because I influence the media; here is reality: ..."
Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?
If yes, the question is why? What came first? Their luck or their perspective? Maybe a couple instances of things working out tips the scales early in life!
> Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?
Optimism vs pessimism is basically only a valid framing in very neutral times. If things really are significantly tilted towards up or down, then you either notice that or you don't, and only framing that makes sense is realism vs confusion/delusion
I'm pretty sure the luck came first because optimism/pessimism is a learned trait.
I say this as someone who considers themselves "Optimistic by nature, pessimistic by experience."
I was born in lucky circumstances but that luck turned in my teens due to factors outside of my control. I have seen firsthand how it works.
Even now, I constantly have to catch myself and force myself to think pessimistically... And my pessimistic projections are usually right or sometimes not pessimistic enough.
But I know I'm a natural optimist by the fact that I don't give up. I've built so much software and startups over the years; most of them I'm still running on the side and keeping up to date even though I know consciously that there is zero chance they will succeed. Deep down I have a deep optimism that something will change and all the opportunities will come at once. Consciously, I know it is delusional but I'm fundamentally motivated by emotions, not thoughts.
It's a weird feeling having built products that work very similarly to (or better than) other products which rake in millions of dollars but not being able to find a single customer due to all sorts of weird contrived socio-political reasons.
> These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.
It's interesting the author chose to wrote this as "advice" given his awareness of this. There are a number of ways he could have shared this information without presenting it as "advice."
How would it be framed? He's sharing what actions that he's taken, that has led to certain life outcomes.
He could just tell his story, explain his approach to life/guiding principles and leave it at that.
> I've never gotten a job by applying to it. It's always been referrals or someone reaching out to me. So honestly, my resume is shit compared to my peers.
alright, checks out.