Referrals are the key to non-FAANG jobs. I also have over 10 years of experience, with six of those years spent working under the same supervisor across two different jobs. Four of those years were two different jobs, thanks to strong referrals from my previous boss and the one I worked with for 6 years before that.
I fumbled a bit early in my career and burned some bridges, but luckily, I smartened up after the first 2ish years.
I figured if I have 10+ years of experience and do not have at least 5-10 people I can call up to ask for a job who've worked with me in the past, I've screwed up. Investing in relationships has been the key job security hack for me (also a completely average React dev who happens to know an above-average amount about video and webrtc).
> Investing in relationships has been the key job security hack for me
This is a thing I failed to learn early on and I think a lot of people don't realize.
Connections frequently take precedence over skill! It's hard to determine skill through a piece of paper and some coding exercises under pressure. But a connection give a good signal on that and truth is almost no job requires maximizing skills (exception is at the bleeding edge and even there not always). It's also a signal about soft skills, trusting the connection isn't going to suggest someone that's difficult to work with.
I think it's easy to miss because we're often so data focused and because we want meritocracy. But the truth is you can't measure everything and not everything that's measurable is easy to measure. It takes more work to determine if some junior from a no name school is better than someone from a prestigious school. By connections make that easier to determine just like the prestige of the school serves as a signal, even if noisy. I think it's important to remember how this compounds too. Like your first year undergrad at Stanford is probably at a very similar experience level to a first year at a community college. But that gap widens and the gap isn't only due to coursework and lecturers.
Your logic works out fine if you don't mind a dash of risk (e.g. from a job loss). But when I ran the numbers from my perspective it didn't seem worth it. (I might be doing my math wrong).
Let's say I get a car that costs $30k, I put $10k down, and I take a loan out using the numbers above rounded up just for napkin math (1% APR, 4% savings account).
After one year:
```
$30,000 x 0.04 = $1,200 from savings account interest
$1,200 x 0.33 = $396 in TAXES from the interest (assuming you earn over $145k/year in California)
$30,000 x 0.01 = $300 in loan interest
Total earned = $1,200 - $396 - $300 = $696
```
Don't get me wrong, $696 isn't _nothing_ but I personally would rather have the feeling of not owing people money then an extra $696 at the end of the year. Add in depreciation from getting a new car and it's almost a wash.
>> I could pay off my car tomorrow. But I'll have more money in the end keeping that cash in the bank. Why would I pay it off early?
> Your logic works out fine if you don't mind a dash of risk (e.g. from a job loss).
I notice that no part of your comment actually describes this risk. What is it? Assuming you have the cash in hand, and it's earning more interest than the interest on your car financing, how would losing your job affect the situation?
The only effect I see is that it will dramatically increase the amount of that extra interest you actually collect, by lowering your tax rate.
I don't live in California, taxes are less. There is no risk from a job loss, I could pay it off tomorrow. You're also only looking at one year of a several year loan.
Sure, more expensive buying a new car. But I was going to get a new car anyways, the question is loan or no loan.
I don't care too much about depreciation. It'll probably be in my garage for a decade or more so that's just paper losses today, and once again I was going to buy new anyways.
I worked at the company that acquired MapQuest a few years ago. It's been bought and sold a few times, but their most popular feature is still the "print maps" button...
As you can guess it's mostly people over the age of 50 still using MapQuest lol
Unless I'm reading the wrong pricing page, Duolingo Max seems to cost $29.99/month. In my experience learning Chinese, it costs $15-20 an hour to find a decent teacher online with whom to practice via video call. A few teachers charge less than $10 an hour, but they are very weak. Seems pretty darn reasonable for me, especially since I'm guessing they have at least $10/month in costs just paying for the LLM.
But I can do the same with my free chat gpt account. I understand this is probably much better and targeted at my knowledge though. As I wrote in another comment, so many want me to subscribe for monthly payments, I wouldn't have money for food if I did to everything I am interested in. And I pay for Duolingo Super already
I'll add to this: If you want to practice following up but are afraid of "bugging" someone, start by wishing 1-3 people happy birthday every day. I put every person I know birthday on one giant Google calendar and wish people happy every day. It's a super easy way to at least say "hi" to someone once a year.
Anecdote from me: I jumped from leading an engineering team for an online virtual events company to working as a solutions engineer for a WebRTC vendor.
They asked for a reference from my previous CEO.
I had left on good terms (gave 4 weeks' notice) and was incredibly professional while working with the previous CEO, so I got a glowing reference. If I had been an ass, it'd be unlikely I'd have gotten such a great reference and got this job. ~6 months later, we even scored my previous CEO as a customer.
The tech world is SMALL. Especially if you niche down career-wise, it's possible to find yourself in a situation where only a couple hundred people worldwide have the same expertise as you. At that level, people would instead work with people they know or have strong references from people they know.
Fun story: I quit my previous job due to health reasons (as far as everyone there knew). I later hear from a friend who works there that during the retro the CEO just said "He couldn't handle the small amount of work that was on his plate." I had never had a one on one with this guy since I started working. He didn't exit interview me. Just a piece of shit truly.
He must have been terrified that people would follow. That’s one of the things about the workplace - the second you’re out the door you don’t matter. He even had the temerity to show everyone around you how they’d be treated if they left. Culture of authority and fear. It’ll come to every company eventually (and spreads like wildfire whenever people hire from Amazon)
I'm a foreigner who's live in Taiwan over the past four years. You can move here tomorrow if you want :D. You can survive with English (though your life will be easier with Mandarin), and there are plenty of English teachers who never learned Mandarin who've lived here for 10+ years.
Highly recommend living here. I met my wife here. Life's chill. Nobody steals. If you've made at least $60k in salary at least once in the last three years you can apply for a Taiwan Gold Card (kinda like a Taiwanese O1 Visa) and come live/work here very easily.
The main reason I continue to learn Mandarin is because my mother in law speaks zero English, so it just makes everyone's live's more fun and pleasant if I speak some Mandarin. :D
My wife teaches Chinese, and this is spot on our situation. Schools and language centers are always hiring. She usually has 1-2 private online students she tutors (generally adults who are learning Chinese for fun). As long as she commits to a semester at a time and doesn't leave in the middle of her semester, she can always return to her job. If we have kids, she can go part-time or be a full-time mom for a few years. Every school teaches the same stuff, so it's not like she has to "keep up" like I do as an engineer and learn new things every few years.
Her income is a lot less than mine, but the extra cash is nice. We've set up our life so we don't NEED the money she brings in so if it ever goes away we'll never panic.
Over the last 10 years, I've gotten every job except one through Hacker News or a referral from a co-worker I met at a job. I got way more callbacks fresh out of school as a 21-year-old living in Canada (aka no USA work permits) via Hacker News than any other channel.
Focus on sending 3-4 _excellent_ applications a day rather than 3000-4000 AI-generated garbage ones. Also, go through your text message history and text every person on there the following:
```
Hi $NAME! I just saw you on $SOCIAL_MEDIA doing $THING and I thought about you? What's the latest with you? No rush to respond if you're busy.
wait for response
Great to hear! I'm currently looking for a software engineering job, do you know anyone who's hiring?
```
You do those two things consistently, you'll have three job offers within 3-4 months.
Now the tricky part is getting the confidence to ACTUALLY DO THE ABOVE. What helped me is going outside and getting involved in ANY club. In the past for me it's been salsa dancing, stand up comedy, and taking a cooking class. Replace those with any other activity you're remotely interested.
Good luck. You got this. The first job or two in tech is tricky. After 3-4 years it gets way easier.
Referrals are the key.