Thank you, this is what I always think with these job adverts. It's almost impossible to think about anything less appealing than a list of technologies they require without any motivation why.
"We're creating a new way for super-rich people to access their swiss bank accounts!"
Yey...
Paraphrasing from a recent recruiter pitch.
Your example of an interesting problem sounds more to me like an interesting solution. It's the computer vision that's fun, right? Or is it the cat shit?
Boring problems don't usually have interesting solutions. I mean, you could make the solution interesting, you could over-engineer it, or choose to solve it in a novel and unique way, but it is not often that you'll be given that opportunity. Un-interesting problems with un-interesting solutions usually get given to the lowest bidder.
I built a cat toy, it's a 42" LCD screen with a touch interface overlaid on top, and then wrote a "bot" that exhibits prey response and can be "caught" by the cat. Fun project, had to figure out how to do multiple toe bean rejection. And a whole bunch of other tech too.
Built a cat toy, it's a home built 3D printed robot arm, that has a plastic rod as the end effector, with a feather on it, that is radio controlled, and can be controlled via a 3D application running in a web browser.
I built a semi-autonomous, self-driving radio control car that can race a human controlled radio control car, and can also give the human operator a first person view, like a racing drone. It used various solutions from computer vision, low-latency video streaming, low-latency, long-range WiFi, and so forth.
I built a human controlled robot to clean the litter box, which then farms out the job to people on Mechanical Turk.
I built an app that helps you find the jigsaw puzzle piece you want when solving a jigsaw.
I built an app that can scan your Scrabble tiles and the Scrabble board, and tell you which word to play for the most value.
I built a number of bots and assist bots that play a popular MMORPG.
I built a dashboard for my home that tells me what the weather is like, where my cats are, where the family wallets are located, where I left my phone.
I built a resume website with a space invaders game embedded in it.
Plus there are hundreds of other projects. Each one interesting in their own way. But what I studiously do is avoid the CRUD apps that are solved problems.
Currently I am tinkering with a Star Trek Picard-like, flight deck transparent "holographic", curved display with head/eye tracking and touch interface. I am also building, as my day job, a computer vision solution that will do full body and face tracking for a new VR HMD.
But yeah, the cat shit was kinda interesting.
I’ve been learning WebGL and using math more than I have since college. It’s very rewarding and what I feel my Computer Science degree prepared me for. I spend a lot of time outdoors and my project is a map simulation of terrain shadows. Every time I’m outdoors and my model lines up with physical reality, I have an almost spiritual moment of feeling like I can comprehend the universe. :)
Well this made my day. I usually ignore recruiters since everytime i tried telling them that i'm looking for something else, they either keep insisting to have a call or they forget about me for a few days and then start sending the same things.
I think this will be my new response for recruiters :)
The best way to get recruiters to stop responding is:
Thank you for making me aware of this opportunity. Before I waste your time, I have a few quick questions that I'd like answered:
Is this fully remote? Or on-site?
And most importantly, what is the compensation range for this position?
My secret is to learn and know "enough" about every OS, every language, every framework out there. Of course you're starting and you don't have either the time or experience to do everything, but do it anyway, slowly, one task at a time. Compare, study a bit, read, and have fun. Also, don't be scared, no one knows everything, you just need to know enough to be able to help (and learn at the same time).
You may need to kick open a few doors. I probably could have done that, but I couldn't be arsed.
I stopped the conversation right there. That was a massive waste of time.
"Don't be showing up on the Ferrari dealership forecourt with a Honda budget in your pocket."
Did the interview, got an offer, and that offer was 70% less than what I was currently making. Turned the offer down.
When asked "why?" I responded "because you lied to me about the compensation. I have no interest in working for anyone that would immediately lie to me."
I will not talk to any company, and haven't for the past 15+ years, that cannot give me a very firm number in the first ten minutes. And I shut down the conversation immediately if they won't.
As I got older and more "adult" responsibilities started coming (mortgage, family planning), economic security became much more of a priority. More conventional things I learned about employee retention and organizational behavior started to make more sense where pay and time off were huge motivational factors. It's okay to be motivated by money.
It isn't always about the pay, but it is often about weeding out the people who would take advantage. There is cheap, and there is poor, and for some parts of my career I have confused the two.
Much like I won't pay for something just because it is expensive, but I will often pay for the more expensive option rather than the cheaper one. Expensive doesn't always mean good, but it is a differentiator and a signalling mechanism.
I use compensation as a litmus test to determine if someone is trying to take advantage of me. If the company is trying to low-ball me, that means to me, not that they are financially cheap (though some are, and you can smell them from as far away as the dog's dinner from two nights ago), but that they believe me to be naive and exploitable. I might be an immigrant, but it doesn't mean that I stepped off the boat yesterday.
Out of all the benefits and bonuses and culture that a company has, all of which can be taken away or changed in an eye blink (Activision's purchase of Blizzard for instance) for a variety of reasons, base compensation is exceptionally hard to hand wave away. Companies that don't pay well usually have crap culture, lousy benefits and work-life balance that truly sucks. Again, for me, compensation is a signalling mechanism.
If yes, then it was a dick move and you definitely dodged a bullet.
I'm asking because I know of some cases where the salary range was listed in the job posting, but after talking to the candidate, the company decided to offer them a number that was below the lower bound, saying that the level of the candidate not enough compared to what they had in mind when they were posting the job.
Now, they might have thought "this guy isn't worth $X, let's offer him $Y" instead, but offering an exceptionally senior candidate $100K is one hell of a "we don't think you're worth it" snub. It's insulting.
Propaganda.
And lies.
And maybe a little bit of marketing. But I repeat myself.
But what I really love, what drives me, is solving interesting problems. That's my entire career. Solve interesting problems.
I've built websites and CRUD apps and mobile apps, out of necessity, but they are universally boring endeavours with little to give them any merit beyond a tiny sliver of an interesting problem. Most of the work that is out there is just grunt work that should be farmed out and then extensively code reviewed.At meetups people ask me, "what do you do?"
And I respond, "Whatever the !@#$ I want to, it makes money, and everyone goes home happy."
I haven't worked a day in my life. I play, every day. And any time I've come close to discovering "it's just another job" I go and find something else to do.
My response on LinkedIn or AngelList when approached by business people and recruiters with their dreadful job opening is usually along the lines of "Thanks for making me aware of this opportunity. Sounds boring. Good luck in your continuing candidate search."