Engineering video
13:14 · 6 September 2024
Assuming the current market operates like the candidate-driven market of five years ago leads to disappointment; developers must adapt to increased competition and higher qualification thresholds.
Watch section from 0:40 →Spending excessive time watching courses, polishing resumes, and updating LinkedIn profiles instead of actually applying for jobs.
Watch section from 1:49 →Idealizing a potential employer and projecting all job expectations onto them before receiving an offer, which leads to devastation upon rejection.
Watch section from 2:51 →Wasting time interviewing in languages you do not master out of desperation, resulting in low-paid offers and lost focus on your core stack.
Watch section from 4:00 →Spending months on LeetCode-style hard algorithms meant for FAANG companies instead of focusing on practical fundamentals and surviving 80% of normal interviews.
Watch section from 5:22 →Wasting weeks building side projects or portfolios because companies care more about professional experience properly reflected on a CV.
Watch section from 6:31 →Getting sidetracked by advice to build a SaaS company, learn blockchain, or study AI instead of mastering your primary tech stack to get hired.
Watch section from 7:24 →Allowing market rejections and negative online comments or peers to convince you that success is impossible.
Watch section from 8:05 →Anxiously obsessing over backup plans like moving back with parents or working as a waiter instead of executing Plan A.
Watch section from 8:55 →Jumping between recruiter calls, live coding, and learning new tools without a schedule, which harms productivity through context switching.
Watch section from 10:00 →Thinking other developers have it easier and wasting time on unfair comparisons instead of focusing on the task at hand.
Watch section from 10:00 →Making unreasonable negotiation demands on your first good offer out of sudden greed after weeks of desperation.
Watch section from 10:00 →Sacrificing physical and mental well-being, abandoning hobbies, and working late hours while job hunting, which damages interview performance.
Watch section from 12:02 →Today I will share with you the 13 most common mistakes I see software engineers making when trying to get hired in the current job market. For context, if you don't know me, my name is Dragosh, I'm an aerospace engineer turned software developer turned mentor. And together with my brother Bogdan, I co-founded the seniordev.com, where in the last three years, we helped over 250 JavaScript developers get to the senior level and beyond, and of course, get high paying jobs in the process.
On the way, I've learned quite a few things about getting hired as a software engineer, so you can avoid being unemployed for months until your savings run out and you have to move back with your parents. And the first mistake is thinking that what worked five years ago will work now. This is not true, the market has changed. Technology has changed. We've seen mass tech layoffs, we've seen AI and LLMs becoming mainstream in software development.
We've seen tech companies struggling to raise venture capital money. So, as a result, there are tons of super talented developers in the market right now. If the last time you've been looking for a job was three or five years ago, you probably did a few applications, one or two technical interviews, and you got an offer. That's because we were in a candidates market. There were more developer jobs than developers available.
Right now, we are in a completely opposite situation. There are more qualified developers available than jobs. This doesn't mean the world it's over. It just means that you might need to level up your skills a bit and your applications in order for you to get a great, high-paying developer job. If you approach the current job market with a mindset from a few years ago, well, you are in for a big disappointment.
Remember, those who survive are the ones that are the most adaptable. Mistake number two, it's watching too much and doing too little. And here is an example of one developer who just join us at the senior Dev and told me the story about how she spent weeks upgrading her Tinkle skill. skills, polishing her resume, and you know, updating her LinkedIn. Then, when the time came to actually apply to jobs, she realized that the job she was looking for had another 40 applicants.
So she held herself back from applying and went back to studying. Months passed by and she was still unemployed. She got stuck in what I call paralysis by analysis, and completely replaced taking action with watching courses and learning. Now, I'm not saying you should go to the market like a headless chicken and and apply to every job you are seeing, or that you should apply to jobs that have tons of applicants.
All I'm saying is that at some point you need to jump into the water and you need to do that as soon and as often as possible. Without action, there is no reaction. In real life, overthinking and over analyzing things doesn't get you results. Taking action gives you results. On to the next point. Mistake number three, it's putting all your eggs in one basket. This one I see all the time with the developers we coach.
So, for example, they start implementing and they start applying to jobs, and after a few weeks they get some positive feedback from a company they like, they start interviewing with them. And as soon as they start interviewing with them, they start getting emotionally attached to it. Thinking about how cool it would be to work there, about how the text stack matches them. And, you know, they kind of start projecting everything they ever wanted in a job onto this one company.
Keep in mind, this company has not even extended an offer yet. In most cases, as you can guess, they get emotionally devastated when the process ends up in a rejection. The moral of the story, it's to not fall in love with any companies. And simply stop yourself from idealizing or committing to a company that has not yet committed to you by making an offer. Keep interviewing with multiple companies, even if you do get an offer.
Don't idealize your job. It's a recipe for disappointment. They say happiness is the difference between reality and expectations. Keep your expectations in check and date around before you set The next mistake, it's interviewing in technologies you have no idea about. This happens because some developers get a bit desperate when things are not moving as fast as they wanted, when they don't get enough recruited calls, and you know, they start interviewing in technologies they never worked with, just to get some practice, or to see how it goes.
One JavaScript developer I know was contacted by a company for a PHP position, and they agreed to the interview. This was, of course, not a good idea, and you will see why. In the following days, they used Chat GPT and they asked a friend who had experience with PHP to help them put together something acceptable for the take-home challenge, only to realize that the next interview, it's only going to be more of the same, PHP, but advanced.
At the end of the process, they got a low-paid offer from the same company who considered them a junior in PHP, even if they were senior in JavaScript. But wait, it gets even worse, because they wasted weeks and made no progress in the language they already mastered, JavaScript. So, double loss. Don't give into temptation even if you are getting a bit desperate. You can't be everything to everybody.
If you're cooking burgers, be the best burger joint in town. If you're doing pizza, be the best pizza restaurant in town. If you're doing JavaScript, be the best JavaScript developer they will ever interview. Anything else will take your focus away from what matters. So keep the main thing the main thing. Mistake number five, that is not picking your battles. A good example of this, uh, developers who invest months into lead coding, even if they've never been asked to solve an algo problem in an interview ever before.
And I don't blame them. Most of the software development interview preparation, it's focused on lead code style problems and fan companies like Google or meta. In reality, these companies only hire a very tiny proportion from all the developers out there. And while preparing for these kind of interviews, you're kind of taking out time from other topics, such as testing, web performance, CI CD. The solutions for most Software developer Saudere, is to discriminate between problems.
For example, if you are not going to interview with Google, forget about dynamic programming. That will take you a few months to master, and you probably don't have that much time to even find a new job. Instead, learn the basics of iteration and recursion. Then move on to other software engineering topics. You probably won't pass all the data searches and algorithms, interviews that you will be faced with.
But you will survive around 80% of them, which is good enough. So, pick your bats, which brings us on to the next mistake. Which is working hard on the wrong things. It doesn't matter how fast you are running, if you're going in the wrong direction. You won't get to your destination. An example of this are developers who after having to go back to the market, invest weeks in building a pixel perfect portfolio.
When in reality, most companies don't really care about your portfolio. They are interested in your experience. We are in a senior market, remember? Senior devs don't have side projects. They don't have pixel perfect portfolios or GitHub profiles. They have professional experience, and that experience, it's properly reflected in their CV. Before wasting hours and hours into something. Make sure it's the right thing.
After almost 11 years of writing code. I would rather work three hours a day on something, but make sure is the right thing to work on. Then work 12 hours on things that don't bring results. Which brings us to the next mistake. Number seven, which is getting distracted by shiny objects. A good example of this is the JavaScript developer who listened to a certain influencer. Saying that, hey, the market it's in a bad shape.
And the way out of this is to build useful things and hire yourself. So build your own SAS company. That's the way out of this situation. Well, let me ask you this, if you can't get a developer job. How could you possibly build a SAS company? That's a totally different set of skills. So you have to tell yourself, no, no to blockchain, no to AI, and no to everything that will take your focus away from the main team that is getting good at the tech stack you are already working with and getting a job in that tech stack first.
Number eight, it's letting negativity get the best of you. As soon as you start facing some rejections or some technical interviews don't go as you planned, you start telling yourself that the market is bad, that you are bad, that you are meant to fail and you never manage to get that new developer job. That's a sure way to fail because, guess what, if you don't think something it's possible, then you won't even try.
And if you try, you won't give your absolute best. So, even if you can't stop the voices in your head, you can choose not to listen to them. You can also eliminate negativity from your life. If you have negative friends, then don't meet with them that often. If you spend too much time on Reddit reading like negative comments about how the market is doing, just stop doing it. Keep in mind that also people usually post the negative stuff and don't post the positive, so your impression reading those comments might be a bit biased towards the negative.
On to number nine, wasting time thinking about plan B. Instead of giving your very best to find a new position, waste time and energy on your plan B. A, what happens if I fail to find a job? Will I have to move back with my parents? Will I have to go back to that waiter job? The thing is, as long as you keep executing on plan A, plan B, it's irrelevant, because whatever plan B will be, will support plan A.
If you run out of money and you have to move back with your mommy and daddy, then you're still a software engineer and you still try to get a new developer job. Nothing changes. If you have to get a waiter job, you'll still interview for your developer job after work, right? Because if you're watching this video, this is what you're probably very good at, at least better than the average population out there.
This is what you've been doing, this is who you are. So, honestly, plan B doesn't matter, because it will support plan A. Don't work on plan B. Instead, work on your conviction. way too many things at the same time, but making progress in none. Jumping from recruiter calls, live coding interviews to learning TypeScript. Multitasking doesn't work because of the cost of context switching. Your brain needs time to do the switch between different tasks. If you're job hunting, you want to plan your days. So, if you're in the middle of looking for a new job right now, you need to plan your days and you need to have a schedule. Have dedicated deep work time slots where you can focus on learning and have interviewing windows where you take calls and do interviews. Everything else will have you running in 10 different directions and achieving very little. Onto the next point, number 11 is thinking that other developers have it easier than you. That is basically putting on a victim's uniform. Sure, there are developers out there who might have it easier than you. Maybe they have more experience, or maybe they were lucky enough to not get laid off and still have a job. But, at the same time, I bet there are people out there who have it a lot harder. There are junior developers who have no experience at all just entering the market. There are people who had to leave the job market because they became parents, or they had to take care of a loved one or someone who got sick. And then there is the other 1 billion people worldwide who lives on less than $1 a day. Don't waste your time with silly comparisons and focus on the task at hand. Onto the next point, number 12, once you do get an offer, get greedy and try to negotiate and make unreasonable demands. I remember back in my junior days when I used to go from I know nothing to I know everything in a few minutes. And I see this happening with developers when interviewing. They are desperate for weeks until they get the first offer. Then, instead of being grateful, they start thinking about what they might have missed out, they think that some of their friends might be making more money. So they get greedy and they start negotiating an already very good offer. Now, I'm not saying you should not negotiate, of course you should. Yet, when you're attempted to do so, ask yourself this question, if you were the hiring manager,
would you hire you? There you go. Onto the next and final mistake to avoid, number 13, neglecting your health and burning out. Who wants to hire burnout people? Nobody. And how can you bring your best to the interview if you're anxious, tired, and exhausted? The more pressure you have to find a new job, the more you need balance in your life. For example, you need to get at least one day off during the week, and you should not work past 7:00, maximum 8:00 p.m., depending on when you started.
If you have certain hobbies that you were doing before getting laid off, then you should keep on doing them. And while you're not spending your time applying to jobs and doing technical interviews, connect with other people and enjoy your life in the meantime. Exchanging your health for money, it's not a good deal. And it's hard to stay positive and persistent until you get an offer, if you're burned out, so make sure you take care of yourself.
Final words, if you're interviewing right now for a new developer job, I wanted to wish you the best of success. I know how hard it can be. Doing applications, getting ejected, being put in the corner, feeling like everyone is scampting and doubting of your knowledge, it's a physically and very emotionally demanding experience to have. But stay strong. Trust me, it's worth it. You will get that job.
As for me, I'll see you in the next one.
