In all honesty, it's not that bad. Some places are like how he described, but there are far more that are not. You want to work at a Google or Microsoft, yeah you'll probably run into something like that, but most places you won't.

In reality, unless you are building truly building a system that needs to scale to a massive size, a company won't be looking for that information. Don't fret it.

Of course this is a matter of opinion, but others have said being an engineer/developer/programmer/whatever kinda sucks. I disagree. I think it's the coolest job in the world. I highly recommend not switching until you've at least tried it at a couple of places. There is always something new to learn and to try.

> In all honesty, it's not that bad.

It absolutely is that bad. If you've not had a shitload of experiences like this, you've been very lucky or very sheltered by an unusual selection of target companies.

On the other hand, I totally agree that being a developer is a very cool job. It's totally worth it, but the hiring process sucks and only seems to be getting worse.

Maybe Europe is different, but I've interviewed in two different countries and I never had this experience. There were at most short, easy technical tests and a few open-ended questions about my past work, but nothing like this.

Being a CS major is fine, but being an engineer does kind of suck. My sister went from junior engineer to product manager and is much happier. I'm currently on a sort of sabbatical and working on a few personal startup-ish projects, but when I get back in the workforce (probably a few months unless one of my projects really takes off), I'll try to do something similar.

To each his own I guess. I find being an engineer to be far less stress than I imagine product managers are under. As a engineer I can just "not care" about whatever random business case is being handled and focus on writing code and honing my skills. Having to care about $company_name's business problems sounds soul draining to say the least.

Having creative control is, to me, very important. I'd much rather solve a problem from start to finish than implement a solution I believe is completely flawed.

IMO, if you’re not caring about the business problems your company is facing, then you are going to be ill-suited to help solve them.

In that case, you should probably go work somewhere else where you can care about the problems being faced by the business.

All IMO, of course.

You need to understand the problems your product is supposed to solve. That holds true whether you are an engineer or a product manager.

This guy had 3 offers with 14 applications so he did pretty well. Interviewing is always stressful and can be upsetting but I personally haven't found it too bad (I actually found applying to graduate schools much worse than applying for jobs in industry)

Well, if you are being treated well now during interviews then use that to your full advantage and try to make sure the company you hire on with after graduation is a place that you can continue to develop at in ten+ years. Getting hired in any position is comically random as it is a series of pass/fail tests in which any fail is terminal, and the final pass/fail test is often pre-decided (although unknown to most of the involved parties, candidate, recruiter, team, hiring manager, etc... )

If your skills are good and you do healthy networking from very beginning then you shouldn't be in such situation. Fine, very first job hunt may need some major effort.

The author of the article has made cold move to other country and hunted for an ideal position (almost) without any network.

Unless desperated I would firstly find a gig in a new place via my existing contacts or cold remotely, definitely before moving over. That could be anything which meets my minimal requirements and then would start to build local connections and learn the market.

Interviewing with recommendation or even being poached by moving coworkers or managers is much better experience.

You should realy start researching market now before graduation. Some freelance or part-time work should expose you to the market and add starter experience to CV.

I did all the above in the past with success.

Yeah the interview process is kind of a mess sorry. If anything getting 3 offers out of 14 applications is a pretty good offer rate imo.

Yeah, surprisingly good. Like, three standard deviations better than I would have expected.

You're interviewing the company (and team) as much as they are interviewing you. If they put you through this kind of garbage, you were warned early. Take the warning and don't work there.

Life is too short to work for incompetent, clueless, stupid organizations.

You won't be treated poorly if you are considered desirable.

If you want to know what that actually means, I suggest befriending people who work as recruiters (or in other hiring roles) at major tech companies and getting the inside scoop from them. You shouldn't just believe everything you read on the internet, after all.

Because you weren't reading the right places, I guess. I've always considered some sucky weeks or months looking for a job to be worth the job itself.