sigh
i’m graduating next may and feeling extremely anxious about the whole job thing. i don’t think i’m necessarily awful at interviews, but i’m fucking terrified of them. i’ve gone through several different rounds for internships and i’m just a sweaty, nervous mess no matter how much prep i do. i hate the fact that every round i meet with someone new and i have to re-pitch myself to them. i wish i could just sit down with an engineer and walk through a real-life problem with them. how did you guys go about getting your first industry-related job? am i just targeting the wrong companies?
I regard job as relative here, because i have two other ways earning my bread that no one will take away from me. Forgive me that, please. I close in on my forties now and surely i never go back into corporate IT.
My first job in corporate IT i landed by just being witty with keyboards in other languages. I had to use a Spanish keyboard to do some Java (no shit: this was 2014) in a notepad on windows because i applied for a windows migration team only taking hard tickets (at least it was pitched in this way to me).
At this point in my life i really no idea about windows any more because i migrated away from that about ten years before that.
But i knew Dvorak. So i did their bs task of programming traffic lights in Java (which basically is first semester for anyone they ever tormented with this fucked up language but nonetheless a hassle on a keyboard you are not used to) and then started rearranging my given keyboard into Dvorak just because i was frustrated and done with their test.
Then they asked, then we talked then they saw my vim, emacs and laptop and hired me.
The point here is: Either you are a sheep or you do it your way from the start. They tried to keep me as an contractor when they moved all my colleagues to another country. They even offered a retainer as a private contractor when i consequently quit then.
TL;DR: Imo corporate environment is all about attitude. Just realize the truth: Most people trying to press you can’t even calculate the Eigenvectors of a 4x4 matrix.
So you can be their slave for their boring lives or you can communicate from the start you won’t be. With actions. Simple actions.
If they press you then even more you weren’t in the right place in the first place. Correct your aim. You can, because your talent is valuable.
They can’t.
That is why they project their slave attitude on you. Simple as that it is.
Last but not least: You yourself are basically never wrong (regarding yourself). You just feel pressed by their bs. Which is normal. Because you did something serious. But people in HR of big companies did quit before they even knew there could be problems. That is why they took they easy door of bypassing math e.g.
Just watch any StarTrek if you can’t follow. In StarTrek nobody listens to HR, as it should be imo. Life is a trip.
Your trip has you as an Engineer. What the fuck more to you expect from a trip ?