we just picked up a new intern this month. they did ok in the interview but it was mostly that their dad works with us that they got a job this summer. this week while we were waiting for a meeting to start one of the other devs asked him about the tools he typicaly uses.
he started talking about these vibe coding IDEs and i had to look them up. WTF! but now it is all making sense. who goes to a 4 year uni getting a cs degree and can't navigate a terminal? this is going to be a long summer.
Act like you know what you're doing (you are likely more capable than you give yourself credit for). Be open to networking opportunities.
Give yourself the opportunities to get a job by applying to places you might be at least a 50% match for, using a well-crafted resume. A lot of these job listings are written on a game of telephone. A lot gets mistranslated between the dev team, management, and HR. Let the interviewer and your own judgement decide if you're a good fit or not after the interview, not that job listing.
These folks are getting to the hiring managers just by sheer number of applications (or knowing the right people), knowing how to get past the filters, and presenting themselves as a great candidate. Do the same, and you might have better luck.
They don't even have to be a racist. It could just be some form of racial bias. It's usually a bias that they aren't even aware of, and it gets glossed over as "the candidate wasn't a good culture fit" or something like that.
I was at a student project that just transitions to a being a normal job once you get your BSc, and there was one guy on our team who nobody knows how he got there, since there were objectively better students (in terms of grades and knowledge) who got rejected. He was beyond useless and always got other people to do his work for him.
Anyways, the company I worked at offered internships for students, and the main criteria for getting accepted was your average grade. I was present to witness that guy going on a call with someone who determines who gets the internship to vouch for his friend. His friend had an average grade far under 8 (which is honestly embarassing at our uni), but this dude said how his friend is very motivated, wants to work, the grade problem is only there because those are some subjects he doesn't care about, and he personally stands behind him that he'll be a grear intern.
Well it worked, that guy got the internship and other students who actually knew something got rejected because they didn't have connections inside the company. I imagine that's a story that gets repeated often. Higher mamagers don't really know who's doing what, so people who know how to confidently bullshit can talk themselves into and out of many situations and they often form connections with similar people.
Yeah. People often complain that connections get jobs, but a big problem is showing others that you can do the job. If someone has already vetted them, it makes the selection process easier.
Fact is there's a lot of dead end postings, as far as I can tell.
Corpos post jobs so they can claim they're trying to hire someone, with zero intention of actually interviewing or hiring anyone.
It's basically a warm blanket for the current overworked and underpaid developers so that they keep working, waiting for help and relief when none is coming.
Then they have a pool of candidates when their current developers get sick of their shit and quit, so that they can fill that role immediately.