Tech companies are famous for coddling their workers but after mass layoffs the industry's culture has shifted. Engineers say that getting hired can require days of work on unpaid assignments.
  • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    4 months ago

    I’m facing this as well across the board, not just where a CS degree is expected. I started off in CS, then a year in discovered I liked working at my school paper enough to drop out after hitting managing ed and having no one left to learn from because the J-school had been gutted in the '80s … in 2000.

    So, no degree. Which now means no job. Not even interviews. I never had any pure development titles that AI would pick up on, so the coding I’ve done also doesn’t count. Your basic bottom-of-the-barrel “and then we were able to lay off half the team” automation that then got me pushed out for providing a useful but unrequested solution that made me a threat.

    I determine my needs and then choose my tools, so sure, I’ll get back up to speed in Python for a visualization project, but I’m not going to spend a couple of weeks trying to retain things with zero goal.

    • rho50@lemmy.nz
      11·
      4 months ago

      I saw a job posting for Senior Software Engineer position at a large tech company (not Big Tech, but high profile and widely known) which required candidates to have “an excellent academic track record, including in high school.” A lot of these requirements feel deliberately arbitrary, and like an effort to thin the herd rather than filter for good candidates.

      • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
        8·
        4 months ago

        Don’t like hiring pregnant women? “Your academic track record doesn’t reflect the standards of excellence that we expect our candidates to display.”

        Don’t like hiring minorities? “Your academic track record doesn’t reflect the standards of excellence that we expect our candidates to display.”

        Don’t like hiring people with natural hairstyles, religious garb, or other ‘unprofessional’ but protected appearances? “Your academic track record doesn’t reflect the standards of excellence that we expect our candidates to display.”