I recently found out that i did not know the maximum. Only multiple offers and taking some risks allowed me to find out and it was well beyond what i had assumed.
You're spot on, and I don't know why people complain about "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is both a valuable skill and a good information discovery process - as you mentioned.
If you are doing a lot of interviews and not getting jobs - then you need more practice doing them. If you're getting so many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more demanding positions.
>I don't know why people complain about "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is both a valuable skill and a good information discovery process - as you mentioned.
for me:
- it's long, often 3 stages minimum, but more typically 5-6 rounds. do I really want to take 5-10 hours per job out of my month just to "figure out my worth?". As long as I can pay the bills and I'm not miserable at my job, I'm fine.
- if you have a job, it is hard to schedule around all these rounds. In addition, it feels stressful since by most intents, a company does not react well to hearing you are shopping around
- it generally makes use of skills that do not reflect my performance in a job. I am 6 years into industry, I don't and never needed to invert a binary tree on the spot. Meanwhile, actual skills like proper coding practices/architecture, code review feedback, test coverages/edge cases, and the ability navigate through the company to find the person you need are barely even mentioned.
- it's a sterile, artificial environment that more or less makes you put on airs to show "your best self". "why do you want to work for this company" is asked in nearly every interview setting and we all know your real answer is the wrong one, as opposed to using the time to show off how much you researched the company. Even if you basically jut googled "X engineer" and applied because the salary range fit you.
I can understand testing in juniors, because there is no license exam for an engineer, and maybe on the other side of the hump you can get to a point where the companies are trying to impress you. But that middle hump feels like the worst of both worlds.
>If you're getting so many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more demanding positions.
if you're at that point, you're probably not going to find your answer on the internet. those sorts of jobs are word of mouth.
The thing is, as an employee you tend to look for a new job only if you start to feel unhappy. This puts you in a slightly needy position and does set the tone. I used to be self employed and learned to enjoy the negotiations. It is kind of crazy to have this binary situation of beeing either employee or contractor but i dont have a solution either.
