Enough is Enough

I don’t often share advice about job searching or finding the right job for you because I find that so much of the advice that is out there about those topics is just… so fucking milque-toast as to be completely unuseful. It feels like an AI generating your horoscope to me. Like, “Leo, you know you should be feeling fabulous but your insecurities are getting in the way.” Yeah of course I know that, and of course my insecurities are getting in the way, but you could have said any sign in front of that and most of the people reading it would be like, “Yeah, totally.” The articles that I have found that detail how to find the “perfect job” or how to “crush an interview” are all so needlessly vague, that they sound on the surface like they might actually be useful advice, but in the end, it’s just more clickbait internet confetti. I have no idea if any of this will be useful to anyone but me, but it has been how I have found the jobs that fit the best for me. I also promise that I will not sound like some chatbot writing an essay full of buzzwords that are meant to make you nod along so as not to look stupid in front of your peers. I don’t need to do that. If my little AuDHD brain can find not just one but several jobs that make me feel good about myself, that I can be confident in doing, and not hate myself every time my alarm goes off, then there should be hope for everyone… right?

First things first, every industry has different hiring practices, but some of them are straight-up meant to be agonizing. Do not assume that they are there to test you or to show off your potential. I promise you some of those “Standard Procedure” interview tests that companies do are literally designed to break you, at worst. At best, they are there to test your willingness to comply with unreasonable tasks. Whiteboard coding is a really good example of that. There is literally not a single situation in which you would ever, in today’s world need to code that way. There are a million resources, and code libraries to help you in moments of doubt. I am not a developer, but I know a couple of things, and to be totally honest with you, if someone expects you to just know how to do things without any resources, that person has already set you up for failure. The real question should never be “Do you know the answer?” Instead should always be, “Do you know how to find the answer efficiently?” Asking someone to build even the simplest Javascript widget on a whiteboard in an interview is just a sadistic practice meant to judge your willingness to take the corporate cock, and test your tolerance to getting abused. That’s it. This is not a skill assessment, it is a “good little bitch” test. The second someone tells me that there is a whiteboard portion to any interview I nope out. If more of us refuse to do this dumb shit, then hopefully they will stop doing it. I know some truly brilliant developers who couldn’t say Hello World in HTML5 on a whiteboard. That doesn’t make them stupid, it just means that if I know how to grow a flower in an optimal Earth climate, chances are I won’t be able to do it on fucking Neptune. In short, if something feels like a setup, chances are it probably is. It is some hiring manager playing just-the-tip with you to see how far you will let it go. Just leave. I promise you’ll be better off.

Second, every article that I have ever read talks about how confidence is really the only thing you need to be successful, but I am going to be really honest with you. This is total bullshit. You can not bluff your way into a dream career. What you can do, is choose to apply for jobs that you believe you can do, even if you don’t have all the experience or education that they are looking for, and then prove it to them, by making sure that you have the answers to typical problems that they might be facing. I absolutely do not research every company that I apply for. That would be absolutely bat-shit bananas. However, once someone reaches out to me for an interview, I make sure that I have given myself at least 48-72 hours to do the necessary research to make sure I don’t go in there looking like a scrub. Some key things you should know about any company you are going into an interview for, regardless of the industry. What year they opened, if this is the only office/building/location, what the founder/owner/CEO’s name is, and what did their last financial quarter (if they are publicly traded) look like? You should also take a peek at Fishbowl, Glassdoor, or similar sites to see if someone has posted common interview questions. Additionally, you SHOULD read the reviews of what it is like to work at that company. You should mention that you have done this so if they try to blow sunshine up your asshole about how much of a family they are there, you can ask them what THEY think is the main contributor to their low review scores on sites like that. Do not make it sound like an attack, more like you are curious as to how they would solve the issue. I would also STRONGLY advise that you take a look at how old the reviews are, what the job titles of the people leaving them are, and if they have had a sudden influx of current employees leaving them, be aware this may be a push from the company in an attempt to raise their overall rating. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, as per usual but it is a good thing to have in your pocket. The other thing, that I like to glean from these reviews is if there are common problems that perhaps it is in your skillset to fix. Saying things like, “I noticed that a lot of the reviews from former employees mention poor communication as a downside, I have a lot of experience with company newsletters, and mass communication with excellent conversion rates, I think I can really help with that.” Try to make sure that the people interviewing you feel at ease. Keep your body language relaxed but still professional. You want them to feel like you are trustworthy and capable. Getting just a little bit real is a good way to establish that rapport. Wait for them to drop a personal tidbit, and then relate to it with a personal tidbit of your own. If you know the person who will be interviewing you’s name, by all means, find out as much as you can about them. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, whatever you can find. A word of warning; don’t engage with their content, don’t be a fucking creep about it, but sometimes this cursory search can show a place you both have worked before or a band you both like. Only mention this commonality if you can establish casual rapport with the interviewer.

Also, make sure that the salary that they are offering is reasonable for where you live, and the job title and responsibilities. I have had a lot of interviews for roles that offered salaries that were much higher than normal, and the same thing was true for every single one of them. They tacked on the high salary like a collar, a license to abuse you, dangling the paycheck knowing that it was more than you would make elsewhere. This is most common in Executive Assistant roles that I have seen, but I have also seen it in other roles. Usually administrative in function. In other words, jobs that have traditionally been done by women. This practice is so gross for so many reasons, and while I will not list all the ways in which I find this personally abhorrent and despicable, I will name a few. EA roles, often require administrative experience, but rarely a college degree. EAs are also still largely women, and the companies that post this type of predatory posting, know that women often are responsible for more than just themselves. If you hire a 20-something man, the likelihood that he is a single parent is low, but not impossible. If you hire a 20-something woman, the chances are higher. They will absolutely leverage this against you when you need to take time off, and will also 100% offer you a higher salary so that you can’t leave no matter what the environment is like. I know I am leaning pretty heavily on the gender binary here, and I know as a nonbinary person that there is always room for the grey area, but in my experience, companies, especially large ones with little to no accountability do not take this into consideration. They think in the extremes, and their behavior reflects that.

I would also urge anyone to avoid applying for jobs that say things like, “We need an office MOM” “You will need to wear many hats” “Need to be able to operate in ambiguity” or anything similar to that. I know that some people really do look for jobs where they can utilize their diverse skills, and they want to be nurturing, and being an office mom sounds great. But I am going to translate these things for you into what they generally actually mean when seen in a job posting below.

“We need an office mom.” We are a company with a lot of young men, and we refuse to hire a janitor, so we need someone who is willing to scrub our toilets, take out the trash, stock the office supplies, and will never complain about these things. We also just want someone to take care of us, so we can use our smart-boy brains to do smart-boy-things and be otherwise completely inept.

“You will need to wear many hats” We really should be hiring 8 people but we don’t have the budget for that, or we do have the budget for it but we would rather spend that money on ping pong tables, and better coffee in the breakroom, so as to keep our employees in the office and at their desks the maximum amount of time, so we will be requiring you to do the job of at a minimum 4 people, but really we are going to squeeze you like a fucking orange at a jamba juice.

“You need to be able to operate comfortably in ambiguity.” One of two things are happening. We don’t know what the actual fuck we are doing, someone just had some money so we decided to do this thing, and we need you to come and unfuck our incompetence. Otherwise, you have two bosses that you have to report to. Those bosses are lateral to each other, and they have different ideas about how things should be done, and how you should be spending your time. If you listen to one over the other, the one you have deprioritized will get punitive, and pouty. If you swap priorities or are in any way insubordinate to any of their conflicting instructions, you will be punished.

Another thing to be on the lookout for is start-up companies that have not yet acquired outside funding. Even if they dangle a decent salary in front of you, the way these places operate is wild, and the chances of an unexpected layoff, missed paychecks, and unreasonable bosses is so high. When someone is bankrolling their baby and paying you out of their own money, they get weirdly entitled about it. I have found that these environments are just too unpredictable, and you are often held hostage to the emotional state of the owner. That is not how any job should be.

In essence, load up your arsenal with knowledge, and know what you are walking into. If you are the kind of person that likes an Everest-like challenge in a job, then ignore everything I just said, but I really think that it is about time that the workers stop accepting this bullshit from the people who need our labor.