Looking for a job as backend developer, a Sankey diagram
Looking for a job as backend developer, a Sankey diagram
Data collected from Oct 6th, 2023, until today. All data collected by me.
Applied to 61 job offers on different sites (LinkedIn mostly, but also some minor Spanish job sites). All of them were for Django or Python backend developer (asking for Django, FastAPI or Flask), mostly mid/senior level, but some of them even were for junior level, just in case.
For companies to say that they can't find workers, it's curious to see why so many don't even give you the time of day.
Yeah. Today I read an article saying last year there was a huge increment of layoffs on IT, and "75% of companies can't find what they are looking for", so I guess they're looking for slaves. Or someone who can read the job application emails.
Especially larger companies are sometimes structurally unable to effectively hire people.
I've been involved in the hiring process of a large company (>100k people at the time). The process goes something like this. The team lead needs a Java dev, announces that to the department head. DH whips out the standard dev requirements, these include some technologies that the department doesn't use anymore, and some the department may would like to use in the future.
That shebang goes to HR. They fluff everything up, add some aspirational stuff, like AI, so they sound more interesting.
Obviously, nobody fits the bill, HR will throw out anyone who doesn't confuse them enough with lies or jargon.
And even if you do get through, internal politics might get you. We had a pretty good candidate once, who was highly competent and had experience in teaching and training junior devs. He interviewed with two teams. My team gave him good grades, but we suggested that the other teams, full of fresh graduates, might profit more from his teaching experience. That was turned into "they don't want him", even though we explicitly said, he's a good hire. He didn't get the job. Absolute shame.
Man, I can say sometimes you're right. But I have an open position on my team, I've received over 100 applications and something like 85% of them have no relevant experience. Do you actually expect me to try and talk to all of them? I do what I can and interview who I think fits best. It's not perfect science but I have to work with what I have.
Congratulations on the job, hope you find it tolerable and that it pays well!
Thank you!
Actually, I hope so. The team seems pretty nice, also the rest of the company. Also, considering my previous job, I think almost any position with good salary is worth. Being unemployed is stressful.
Damn just 60 applications? Nice.
That's what I was thinking... I'm over that amount already and I have one interview so far. Though to be fair I'm applying to co-ops which I guess might be more competitive?
1 offer. Rejected by interviewee because company didnt give any salary benefits info until the very end.
You gotta make it a point to ask what the pay range is in the first interview or you’re wasting your own time. If they won’t tell you, the job isn’t worth your time anyway.
The last time I was looking for a job, I applied to SpaceX (this was before Musk went off the deep end) and I didn’t hear back. Then a year later I get an email telling me my application was denied…. after I’d been working for LinkedIn for ten months.
Several years ago, I got an offer. I said I was interested in, and no response until 4 years after that, when the same peson, send me the same offer, like "hey, are you still looking for job?" xD
When there's multiple people involved with hiring this happens all the time. When you get 100/1000s of applications many get stuck in some in-between status like contacting/shortlist when they should be denied. If you're used to ERP/CRM where there's no way to abandon a ticket unless you mark it resolved, LinkedIn and indeed feel pretty loose by comparison and it's easy to miss things like that.
My stats (fullstack dev) :
1 job application -> rejected after first interview
no other job applications written, just has a face to face chat with the leadership and their friends at different events. At the interviews, I showed some of my opensauce projects that I did for fun -> 2 consecutive jobs in a decent environment with decent pay.
Had to write a cv after I got one of the jobs, just so their paperwork is complete lol
I have some of my projects linked into my personal website, which is available through LinkedIn and rest of sites. But during interviews they never ask, and idk how to feel about it.
As a manager, I won't ask for code by the time someone is in the interview, but I'll read anything shared/linked before that. Usually, that's a GitHub link toward the top of their Resume/CV.
I would say that during the interview is too late to share source code, but one candidate brought in a big binder full of source code. It was a good interview. I read their code and asked them questions about it. It was bad code (as lots of "good enough" code is), but they actively engaged in a discussion with me about how it could be improved. I hired them.
Edit: I'll always read a candidates source code if I can find it. Linked from your website might be too subtle for me on a busy day, though. Depending how prominent your site is on your CV, and how prominent your code is on your site.
49+3+10 = 62 not 61 so the numbers are off somewhere
True! I made this using SankeyMATIC, but I should generate it using Python, Pandas and Plotly (which was my very first idea) to avoid this.
Also, instead of 10 first interviews, were just 9. Good eye.
49 + 3 + 8 + 1 = 61
You add the leaf nodes.
Look on news.ycombinator.com "who is hiring" thread posted on 1st weekday of each month. Lots of senior backend jobs there, many remote.
In the end I found something which I really like. But the search was painful, due to the bug amount of no responses. Not even a call to ask me about my background, or an email saying they're going to move forward with other candidate...
What's your level of experience like? Always curious how that affects the hit rate
Currently, mid/senior. Some companies give me senior grade, but for most of them I'm still in mid level (+3.5 years of experience as backend developer, almost 7 years coding)
Zero = false, no?