[hirako2000]

Not the answer people in your situation like to hear:

- you are too hot for well over 90% of the roles up for grabs. - your expected salary alone may be enough a deterrent.

One thing hasn't changed: the recruiting scene has not improved, rather gotten worse.

Jack is a recruiting manager. He constantly needs people and the three projects he is on are far behind. HR just announced a wage cap and he will only be able to hire one engineer. 10 remotely relevant applicants, you are one of them, but the other 9 will say yes to start coding this impossible to complete set of features and won't make noise until there is room for a few more recruits. 3 of them seem like a good fit and he won't have to battle with HR like last time to offer twice what he would offer any other three who have a few years experience which should be enough to get moving with lambdas on AWS.

My tip would be to not give in and be as meticulous in your selection of roles to apply to as your technical expertise is.

Plenty of companies out there looking for exactly your level of experience and nothing less.

On the bright side, it may sound contradictive but more roles are open than ever for top tier talent. Compensations have more than doubled in the last 10y and hiring people expect more, add noise that has amplified even more than compensations and that's what the climate is like.

It takes several months to land a fitting role. Less than that you are very lucky or gave in for something subpar to your value

[John23832]

This.

The recruiters don't know quality. They know the (general) requirements asked for by the job req and the resources available to them to complete a hire (salary). OP is "failing" along one of these dimensions. From the OP's description, they fit the general requirements, so it's most likely the salary (whether the salary expectation was stated explicitly by the OP, or assumed by the recruiter).

Hopefully the OP has some savings and can withstand the amount of time to find a quality fit for themselves. I'm not sure what other solution there is.

[hirako2000]

That.

I don't think OP disclosed any info about salaries before getting "rejected".

He could just broadcast to his circle that he's available for hire and a few weeks later some opportunity come up. Seems dumb can feel diminishing but can save a lot of time, good connections know what's a fit and what isn't.

[bentlegen]

I’ll go one further: most people don’t know quality, including most engineers.

Is it reasonable for 90% of software engineers to know what a top 10% software engineer resume looks like? I don’t think so. Most people think repeating dozens of skills at the top of your resume with no storytelling is a must-have (e.g. “skilled w/ Python, Ruby, Scala, Rust, Go …”).

[908B64B197]

> Is it reasonable for 90% of software engineers to know what a top 10% software engineer resume looks like? I don’t think so.

That's because 90% of engineers never encountered someone from the top 10%.

I recall a story someone told me a while ago. Software business that did local CoL/prevailing wages. Hired an intern one summer that was just running around in circles around the other, more senior devs. Useless to say they loved him and the next summer they tried to get him back, even offering a signing bonus for an internship (something they considered unheard of) but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. You can guess the comp was probably already 3x what his previous job was offering. Of course, he wouldn't return.

There's a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to most companies, even if they are in the same "local market" [0][1] (Some use the term "dark matter devs" but I know it has another meaning [2]). These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally).

[0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

[1] http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/

[2] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...

[CSSer]

Sometimes I think mandatory hiring participation should be a thing. I generally learned as much about myself as I did from candidates from it.

But what you said here about buzzword bingo is so painfully true. I’ve seen that go to ridiculous lengths more times than I can count.

[SavageBeast]

I'll even go one more step and say that Ive been in places where candidates were interviewed and "not liked" because some of the more senior devs in the place felt outshined/threatened by the candidates credentials and ability.

These same candidates were great when I interviewed them but when I said yes to a person, there were usually a hand full of people on the team who didn't like them for various "not enough blah blah probably can't do the work we do here" etc.

These same people tended to have no objections to hiring candidates with more marginal credentials and talent.

In the case Im referring to, the engineers absolutely did understand quality and didn't want it around, instead favoring lower quality such that they could remain unchallenged. I wonder how common this is in the world.

[sibeliuss]

Can confirm this! It's only when certain software engineers step to the hiring process that real talent is able to jump out. Otherwise, its a huge mess.

[dsattt]

How can I find the roles looking for top tier talent?

[gumby]

> your expected salary alone may be enough a deterrent.

Another possible (and to me unexpected) consequence of pay transparency in job offers is that the hiring company can (hopefully will) believe you’re OK with the salary on offer.

[throwaway_sp11]

Thank you so much for the perspective. This is all hugely useful to me.