Ask HN: How did you find your job?
I appreciate the who's hiring / who wants to be hired posts. I am curious if we can flip this pattern a little and have some discussions on how people found jobs they are in, or jobs that were meaningful and impactful in their careers.
Locating: How did you find the job? Did it find you?
Interviewing: Was there anything you did that made a difference? Different strategies that might not be intuitive?
Surviving: Every job has its flaws, what have you done to maintain your ability to earn an income despite issues that had made previous jobs difficult / unpleasant / untenable.
Currently unemployed, quit my job working for one of the states in the US earlier this year because they were not treating software development as a first class citizen. It's hard to get work done when you can't get any testing, can't get any infra or PM support, have to do everything yourself in a vaccum. Have to run apps on a server in the closet.
First time in my life I "chose myself" and quit a job instead of staying in something that was very negatively affecting my mental health. It's been hard to find a way to get back into employment without addressing fears of hostile, toxic work environments.
Fingers crossed for some ideas or directions that can give me some new things to try instead of just doing the same shit that fails over and over again.
First mistake:
> quit my job working for one of the states in the US earlier this year because they were not treating software development as a first class citizen. It's hard to get work done when you can't get any testing, can't get any infra or PM support, have to do everything yourself in a vaccum. Have to run apps on a server in the closet.
You don’t quit a job until you have another one lined up. You do your work the best you can for 40 hours a week and leave. If you don’t get all of your work done and they fire you, at least you kept getting a paycheck longer. Don’t let your pride or frustrating keep you from exchanging labor for money to support your addiction to food and shelter.
> Surviving: Every job has its flaws, what have you done to maintain your ability to earn an income despite issues that had made previous jobs difficult / unpleasant / untenable.
You saw that last response I had? I care about doing the best job I can given circumstances outside of my “circle of influence” for 40 hours a week and then I go home. Every pay period money get deposited in my account and depending on the job RSUs get deposited in my brokerage account every vesting period.
As soon as I get off work, I don’t think about it until the next day.
> First time in my life I "chose myself" and quit a job instead of staying in something that was very negatively affecting my mental health. It's been hard to find a way to get back into employment without addressing fears of hostile, toxic work environments.
What you described is neither hostile or toxic.
But now to your question, I’ve been working a lot longer. But I changed jobs in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2023, and lasted year.
1. External recruiters who reach out to me.
2. Reaching out to recruiters who I have kept in touch with for well over a decade.
3. Reaching out to companies where I had a specialized skillset - no “full stack development” or web development is not specialized
4. My network that I always keep warm.
Out of full time jobs (not including the freelance work):
4 jobs via Facebook (notably a top 50 YC backed unicorn). One direct referral. One from a job board. One from a university alumni group where I was the committee. One from LinkedIn.
I "blog" a lot on social media, so most of the FB jobs "found me". But for my first job, I went through my friend list one by one and asked for jobs because 3 months on job sites weren't turning up anything. In the recent 5 years, LinkedIn has far surpassed FB for leads.
Job boards are terrible. One rejected me while I was interviewing (got the interview via HN). One rejected me while I was in the office.
Recruiters bring in a lot of high quality leads (highest being TikTok). But 0% success rate for me. One told me that I was ghosted for a role, but when I applied directly for that exact role later, I got it within 2 weeks of application.
Sending out emails/DMs to C-levels and asking for a job actually has a good interview rate, but for startups. Most couldn't afford the usual rate, but if I were desperate, I'd do this.
Most of the time via recruiters reaching out. Secondly, via actively submitting applications on LinkedIn etc. when I needed.
Surviving: I survive as long as I need to according to circumstances, but no longer. Until I leave inappropriate place.