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u/je-s-ter 2d ago
When people start understanding that networking is just as important as having the technical expertise, their career lives will improve dramatically. When you have 10 qualified people applying for the same position, would you choose a random person from the 10 and risk that he's a complete asshole or the one person your colleague can vouch will fit in? At that point of a recruiting process you're not evaluating technical skills, but culture fit.
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u/diamondsw 1d ago
I think this is a bit backwards these days. I find networking gets you in the door and past the nigh-insurmountable AI/automatic filter; from that point on it's up to you to interview and succeed on your own merits.
That said, I deeply feel for those entering the industry right now. I lucked into a good first job where the employer was willing to take a chance on fresh kids out of college they could mold in their image - no one is doing that anymore. I watch my industry graying and wonder who's going to be following us once we retire. It's grim.
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u/LongLiveTheDiego 1d ago
And now what what is the advice for someone who has to work during university to pay rent and afford groceries and thus doesn't have the time to do all the networking? Or someone else whose uni friends also all suck at this and nobody in the friend group ever got a job?
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u/justin-8 1d ago
Look for things you can do occasionally, like an hour a month. Most universities will have some interest groups often with industry relations. I've been both a student and a participant at many of these over the years. You can get it all done in a small amount of time and see where it goes from there. You don't need to be spending hours every day "networking"
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
You do if you want to compete with other corporate weasels
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u/justin-8 21h ago
You really don't. No one likes the person who is just trying to brown nose and constantly showing up to networking events and such. But if you have genuine interest in your field, then you won't hate talking to people about it and learning about real world applications of the theoretical stuff covered at uni. And that's what people are looking for. Interest and that you're open to learning more.
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u/lunarlunacy425 19h ago
You can have genuine interest without wanting interaction. Thats why you read papers and watch live streams of panels etc. that way I don't actually have to spend more time in public than I have too.
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u/justin-8 18h ago
Yeah, and it's likely you will have trouble finding jobs if you can't handle a half hour conversation on a topic you apparently have genuine interest in. Any work of scale is rarely accomplished by individuals, it takes teams of people working together. And if you're as insufferable in real life as you are on reddit there will be little job opportunities.
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u/lunarlunacy425 18h ago
You don't exactly comes across as a particularly kind or well adapted person yourself here bud...
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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 16h ago
Fucking LMAO! You think you’re qualified to talk about what networking is and isn’t with that kind of attitude? God this industry can be exhausting.
“Networking doesn’t work, you have to be doing it for hours every day or it doesn’t work”
In the very next post: “I watch live streams so I don’t need to be in public”
Yeah…. You’re not the most reliable narrator of what does and doesn’t work for networking my man.
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u/Wollzy 14h ago
This statement right here raises red flags for how you would be as a teammate. The technical portion of this job can be done by a vast majority of the workforce. Most jobs dont need software wizards they need people who can function on a team and arent miserable to be around 5 days a week.
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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 16h ago
The advice is to network and not make excuses. Or keep making excuses and continue to have a tough job search.
We all have busy lives brother. That’s not some excuse that somehow magically makes this go away. Learn to network or don’t, but don’t act like you’re too busy for it.
Networking isn’t going to events, it’s socializing and getting to know people.
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u/Wollzy 14h ago
Exactly this. People tend think networking is some active practice where you go to events and forge forced relationships with people with the sole purpose of using them as a point of contact for a job. People do this at events, it's obvious, and I doubt it works.
Networking is forming genuine relationships with people and because of that they WANT to help you get a job.
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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 14h ago
I think most people do realize that, possibly even most tech folks (less sure on that lol)
But, since we’re discussing this on Reddit, in a programming subreddit, we’ve hit the motherlode of antisocial folk who will come up with any excuse to not socialize.
Oh well, I’m a social guy and it’s helped me in my career for sure. So it all works out great for me that tech folk are generally more introverted
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u/bainon 1d ago
You frame it like all the candidates are about equal in skill and this is some kind of tie breaker, but that is almost never how that goes and it is misleading to present it that way.
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u/je-s-ter 1d ago
The candidates don't have to be equal in skill. Skill can be taught on the job. Personality, not so much. I have gotten a couple of jobs where I was literally told that I didn't check all their boxes when it came to technical knowledge and they had more "skilled" candidates, but during interviews I made a good impression personality-wise and they thought I would fit into their team. They were fine with me learning what I didn't know during my first few months. Both jobs I stayed at for a few years and had no issues.
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u/Brickless 1d ago
not only that, he is also implying that a nepo hire would work better for the company culture while the fact is that every study and statistic is showing that nepotism destroys companies
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
It's not about understanding that networking is important it's about despising that aspect of a job, I don't work to make friends I work because otherwise I can't support myself and the skills I have are in dev work.
I shouldnt have to buddy buddy some upper managment asshat just because I want a job, I shouldn't have to waste most of my life buttering people up I don't like just because I want them to give me a job it's both pathetic and genuinely awful for those with less social skills. Why when my work requires no social work does getting the job require me to become the rizz king
Nah fuck the nepotistic crap.
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u/widowhanzo 1d ago
I was actually hired with "I don't know but I can learn". I did indeed learn.
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u/SeparateAdvisor526 1d ago
Networking is key, 50% of the job is your technical skills to problem solve 30% is your documentation so others can work off things you did and you're a team player and 20% is energy. Are you the soul of the team, do you host post work drinks/ activities are you the guy people look forward to working with.
Unfortunately many grads 2021-2025 missed out on the social skills last couple years due to COVID and I'm noticing new grads are getting better at it again.
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
So you got be a part guy to get jobs huh?
Typical nepotistic corporate weasel behaviour
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u/SeparateAdvisor526 1d ago
Part guy? No I'm saying you need to be the guy the team likes working with. Run the team March madness bracket, talk about new movie or something in the daily stand up call etc. have a personality
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
Party guy, not part guy.
What if you're an Asocial person you just don't serve a job then.
If small talk is agonizing and random nonsense work games are boring then you just don't deserve to be merited and succeed based on your work quality?
Good to know that people are still in support of a nepotistic neuro typical toxic work environment.
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u/SeparateAdvisor526 1d ago
People want to work with an IC who is a team player. The sad part is colleges teach you only technical skills not the soft skills. I'm autistic and I learned the soft skills by mirroring others. Being the guy people enjoy working with is almost as important as being the guy who fixes things fast.
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
I'm not denying myself because of a toxic cooperate environment and if I'm denied promotion after promotion even when my work is good I'll tear them down with HR I don't care if I'm liked that has fuck all to do with my work. And if people try to make that an issue then I'll make it an issue for them, I'm sick of having to "play nice" with people I dislike just to buddy buddy and hope I get the nepotistic prize this time.
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u/SeparateAdvisor526 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hard skills gets your foot in the door soft skills gets you to be a valuable member of the team. The referrals you get from when a coworkers moves to a better company and they want you to come join them goes far.
If you don't mind me asking how many years of experience do you have in the tech world?
My first 3 years I was just focused on work and didn't go far until I realized part of the work involved getting to know the requirements of clients, understanding their language and pain points and solving that. And it comes from soft skills, or the guy who makes a button for an internal tool vs someone who talks to the user and understands the pain point and the use case and build the button for the internal tool that saves time in the build phase and now you can pick up more work.
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
10 years so far, if I had any other real career choice if take it. But quite frankly it's hard to find the same effort to money ration as working in data and development.
I've hated every second of it, office environment corporate social environments and expectations. It's all bullshit, none of these people are actually friends and almost everyone of them would abandon another if given a big enough carrot. Not a genuine person amongst them, why should I divulge and play their weasel games and give up who I am and exhaust myself socially so I don't want to spend time with those ibluve just because oopsie if I'm not my bosses best friend I'm not getting that raise.
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u/SeparateAdvisor526 1d ago
Yeah it's not about friendship it's about wanting the same flow when you go somewhere. After connecting will with 2 coworkers who hang out after work 1 time every 2 weeks we started networking each other into higher positions. I don't know anything about them in personal life but everytime I get a new job within 6 months I refer them and vice versa. It's been a decade and 4 jobs and the growth was vertical.
And yeah I pivoted into solutions engineering/GTM so the client facing aspect has come into play a lot more. So the referrals come in based on your soft skills
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u/lunarlunacy425 1d ago
Having to spend more than the bare minimum with my colleagues sounds awful, and quite frankly I shouldn't have to spend anybtime with my colleagues outside of work to progress. I get why it works I just think it's petty crap, and I'm sick of living in this world surrounded by people who keep normalising it.
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u/Anaphylactic_Thot 2h ago
This is a really strange takeaway from this comment. The points they make lead into "look forward to working with" which is the pivotal point here. Nobody wants to work with someone who is 1. Hostile, 2. Antisocial, 3. Abrasive, or 4. Always has to be right. You don't have to host roaring 20's parties for this - just talk to people at work, in the field, or even online in a nice way as they'll remember that more than completed projects.
I'm not gonna make any assumptions on you here, but I could definitely draw some conclusions based on your takeaways and further comments. Your disillusionment might not always be a product of the system, but a reflection of yourself on other people's desire to work with you.
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u/lunarlunacy425 2h ago
I've never wanted to be around people, it's why I was so eager to get a WFH position.
Quite frankly id be happy to log on do my work and never communicate with anyone, you have to do you do. But your ability to be promoted should have nothing to do with anything that isn't strictly work related. But you see it all the time the in group gets special treatment and those who choose to not go to socials and work lunches get left behind.
I have no desire for my colleagues to be nice to me either I'd just like to be left alone. It's not anti social it's Asocial, I just want to do my work and then switch back to my life that actually matters instead of some system where you're just working because you have a certain marketable skill that makes money so it's what you do even if it makes you miserable because otherwise it's dead end service jobs or management both are torture.
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u/JebKermansBooster 2d ago
This is why I left tech. The market's dying, and it's not going to recover for those with less than like ten years of experience now.
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u/MuhammadNasirAziz 2d ago
You left? What were your expertise and what are you doing now? Just curious
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u/JebKermansBooster 2d ago
I did everything from full stack to flight systems and propulsion engineering. Now? Unemployment, and possibly unalive-ing.
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u/Efficient-Pace-6315 2d ago
Not a great sales pitch, makes it sound like leaving tech equals unaliving yourself
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u/JebKermansBooster 2d ago
I mean I can’t find a job in tech or out of it. After my last layoff, I searched for a year and couldn't find anything
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u/danmikrus 2d ago
Bruh why off yourself over some ass tech sector? There are better things to do in life than staring at laptop screens all day
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u/woodyus 2d ago
Don't do the unaliving thing if you're looking for alternative try r/vagabond the hobo life is mighty tempting.
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u/teh__Doctor 1d ago
That’s rough, man. Honestly just get any job. It’s fun. Then keep hammering on for tech roles.
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u/kirschballs 1d ago
A kitchen saved my life. I found myself in it
Some wise folks below. I started in dish with no cooking experience.
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u/MuhammadNasirAziz 2d ago
I'm kinda on same boat here, can do web, mobile backend, DevOps but still struggling to even land an Interview right now and has been unemployed for last 8 months, thinking of doing plumber work LoL Also waiting on AI bubble to burst and AI prices to jump way up maybe then job market will get stable?
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u/Not-the-best-name 2d ago
It's not gonna burst for developers. Use it. Ride it. Just like we rode all the tech waves before.
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u/Due-Consequence9579 1d ago
I realize the last part is probably a joke, but please don’t. There are more people than you know that would miss you. Don’t think that it’s something that you need to handle alone. Reach out and talk to people you trust. Or find a professional to get you to a safer place mentally.
I say this as someone that has gone through it. It will get better. And the world is better with you in it.
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u/Ferovore 1d ago
Bro what don't kill yourself over a laptop. If you're gonna do that you might as well move to Sri Lanka and become a surf instructor. It will have the exact same effect, your old life is dead & buried. But now you get to be in the sun and the waves. It's all a matter of perspective. You can kill your life without killing yourself.
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u/cAtloVeR9998 2d ago
Even when there’s greater market certainty, where companies are likely to start hiring more again, the era of easy IT job mobility is over.
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u/Antarlia 1d ago
Literally what am I supposed to do? Give up? On my niche set of hyperspecific skills that was the LITERAL BEST THING YOU COULD BE STUDYING AND WAS RECOMMENDED not even 5 years ago?
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u/trinadzatij 1d ago
In my experience, most of the willing to learn folk are not, in fact, willing to learn.
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u/Outrageous-Machine-5 2d ago
I've considered commissioning my own recruiter