I last switched jobs while working at Apple last October. Having the BATNA of your current employment is crucial to the negotiation process and I can't imagine forgoing that- if you have no current income that's an insane bargaining handicap.

Anyone with experience absolutely is not going to go for "quit your job, and maybe we'll give you a new one after a week, maybe it won't work out and you are boned"

When I said no, they wanted me to come out Friday through Monday and since the whole company works on the weekend, they would get 4 days to work with me.

At that point I said I wasn't interested.

Could you share the name of the company so others might avoid them and avoid wasting their time with such nonsense?

I guess the lesson learned is to ask what the interview process looks like before getting involved.

However for this company, I applied online, they sent me a InterviewStreet/HackerRank coding test, and only after I passed that did a recruiter call me, and tell me they wanted me onsite for a week.

This is a huge red flag in my opinion and I would recommend people not agree to this. Why? Because it shows complete disregard for the candidate. "Pass a test and you can speak to an actual human being." Its demeaning. It also shows just how useless many recruiters have become. Part of the job of a recruiter's job and good ones do this, is to get a candidate excited about interviewing with the company and get the preliminary deal breaker questions out of the way to see if it even makes sense to proceed.

Nowadays I just point them at my github. If a body of open source isn't enough to get an interview I'm not interested in working there.

I have no problem with competency testing provided I have already spoken to someone on the team and established contact and registered interest with someone besides a recruiter.

Initially it was a Hackerrank challenge, now its a (100% Javascript) "Full Stack" take home exercise before you even get to speak to anyone technical.

I just finished working for a YC company that not only demanded a two week trial period, but after doing that trial period instead kept me on a contract billed for eight hour days but then insisted I must be in the office from 9 - 6:30 (their "engineering hours"). They wanted me to work close to 50 hours a week for no health insurance while underpaying hours and forcing me to attend all company events including weekend "hackathons" (haha so fun). It was a nightmare and I'm glad to be out of it.

The irony is that it was a company that prides itself on giving people stable jobs and healthcare.

Additionally I've had negotiations stretch on for months. That isn't very comfortable with no income, and is an absolutely enourmous opportunity cost.

The more specialized you are the fewer jobs there are out there that match your skill set. Not every job market is as liquid as that of, say, junior java developers.

Rejecting this job might mean waiting another month or two for another to come along.

Avoiding months of unemployment also isn't just about the hit to your savings it's also about the hole on your CV.

If you lack confidence that you'll be able to find at least another two job offers in a timeframe that makes you comfortable, then I agree don't quit your job.

Anyone with experience shouldn't lack that confidence though.

Your argument also assumes that I have a competing offer already when negotiating, but how did I get that competing offer? If you have a job, that solves the chicken and egg problem. If you don't, you don't have the leverage to anchor that first offer, which anchors the second, etc.

Having done both at similar skill levels, I can tell you the outcomes are much better with a job in hand.

The tone of this implies that lining up a new job without first quitting is outdated and negative. From the other side, quitting before having a new position can look irresponsible.

I have never quit a job without another lined up and have done quite nicely, myself. Why ever invest in trashy projects when one can get good jobs quickly and easily?

I suppose sleep and videogames aren't great answers. Taking time off to travel or explore some other interest is almost certainly fine in SV.

Ultimately, I think most places are so hard up to find qualified candidates that as long as you pass the interview and don't come off as a total slacker, you're probably fine. But if you're career-minded and applying to a place that has their career tracks worked out (read, not most startups), you probably want to give that impression to your future engineering manager.

    > I can't imagine finding a new programming job while still working at the old job.

Giving up a job (therefore your income) just to find another job is not an option for many.

At the time I was living in north east Ohio, where cost of living is fairly low. It would certainly be harder in high cost of living areas.

That is ridiculous, you must have incredibly bad time management skills. Or do you actually think this is very common?

I had a company demand I do two phone interviews, plus an onsite, 2 time zones away, for a $50/hr, temporary contract with no health insurance. Obviously, I politely declined to continue, but companies wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't working on some candidates.

Can you break down how much time you spent on each of those tasks that they took up the equivalent of an entire 8 or 9 hour work day 5 days a week?

I think you might be in the minority with your outlook. Most people opt to keep their paycheck and health insurance and vacation time until they find something new. Not least those with families. Also its much easier to negotiate a higher salary using your existing salary as a starting point.

Morning: 1-2 hours: Study a chapter of CLRS Algos book 1-2 hours: HackerRank 1-2 hours: Studying trivia of technology X

Afternoon was all about sales - updating social networks, filling out applications, talking to recruiters on the phone, scheduling interviews, etc. I probably applied to about 250-300 companies.

I made tweaks as I went - I found that recruiters preferred to talk in the morning, so I eventually inverted the whole thing. I started to sniff out which companies were serious about hiring and which perpetually advertise for talent

This is just a rough framework. Sometimes I'd spend the whole morning on CLRS, or a tricky Hacker Rank problem, other times I'd spend the whole day interviewing.

Before I spoke with anyone at a company, I always did research on them, the company, the company's market, and the technologies they were interviewing for.

Would you be able to share how you sniffed them out or what techniques worked for you?

In my opinion this is one of the largest time sinks. Companies that aren't really hiring.

I see this repeatedly on the HN "Who's Hiring" thread. Companies just perpetually advertise the same roles and very often these are the same companies who seem to have no problem wasting other's people time with flakey recruiters or ghosting or just never responding to candidates. I would love to know if there is a commonality you found?

I also wish there were a better way to share experiences regarding these perpetual time wasters, something akin to hosts respond percentage on AirBnB. And I personally don't consider Glassdoor to be a very good experience or trustworthy outlet.

We often hear about the shortage of talent. And while I don't doubt there is an amount of shortage, I am often left wondering what percentage of this are companies completely broken hiring process. I also wonder whether these companies are even aware of how broken their process and their recruiters are.

to each their own of course

I can agree that it's pretty difficult to find a new job while still working. However, most companies let you work from home nowadays. You can just interview during that time. Is it ethical? Who cares? It's business; the nature of the beast.

I don't think that's even slightly true.

From my experience of hiring people and looking for a job myself, this is the exception.