Silicon Valley is a dinosaur!

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I applied for a few jobs yesterday to some large tech companies out on the West Coast. I knew that I probably wouldn't qualify for those jobs but I wanted to see how their application process worked given how a lot of companies are having their application process being digitalized. Boy, that was a real eye opener. I won't name the companies specifically but they are the biggest in the tech industry and basically the foundation of Silicon Valley. I wrote notes as I filled out my applications:

Company #1 - Okay overall but a bit clumsy and you pretty much have to have their email account to apply, go figure.

Company #2 - Couldn't even apply (website would stall), slow and cluttered, confusing, lots of positions that seemed like nonsense and the whole place talked about being unique/thinking outside the box but didn't even come close to it in practice. What a joke!

Company #3 - Was able to apply but site expected me to fill out crap that I already had in my resume. Some parts of application had spasmatic controls and scrollboxes/buttons (especially the time zone box. Never thought it would be a chore to put in my f*****g time - zqcbqzcbvqczbqcb!!). Huge section on citizenship status (no, I'm really from the Klingon Empire but I pretend to be a US citizen)

Company #4 - Again, I had to set up their own proprietary account for this which was a PITA. I had to refill out some information twice since the site kept deleting information (like having to fill out what state I lived in and whether I was a minority or not. Durrr...) because it did the circular loop with some of the information I would enter. Also was slow and had a lot of top-heavy digital bling (several videos running at once).

Company #5 - Once more, I had to set up a proprietary account with these guys. I fought with the website over my stupid password and a bunch of security questions which was liked getting kicked by rabid midgets. I couldn't upload my resume so I had to type much of it in even though the format supposedly was an accepted one. Searching for the job was a pain as well; I guess marketing is the same department as finance.

All of these sites had search functions that were hard to use and often times redundant or loaded with gibberish in some cases. They also all talked about diversity and how they think outside the box and the usual HR nonsense. Also, all of them pestered me on my gender, veteran status, my skin color or whether I was disabled or not. This might be a legal thing but it's still annoying.

Seriously, how can tech companies function like this? My system might be older but it's not an antique and quite honestly I don't see how tech companies can't get their website software to work with Linux or Firefox. Remember, these are the people who are running much of the entire virtual world and the internet. These are multibillion dollar companies that can't get their own tech to work right. It wouldn't surprise me if their servers and networks are held together by duct tape or Saran wrap since those websites were bulky, slow and sometimes didn't even load at all. Thank God they're not building cars. Oh wait, there's those electric ones they're building.... But seriously, isn't this an example of what is wrong with the business world? I think it says a lot about their product as far as I'm concerned. Would you buy soap from someone whose warehouse has dirt sprayed all over the walls? Would you eat at a restaurant where the kitchen and employee bathrooms are combined in the same room? How about going to a college where the teachers can't spell? I didn't think so. That's scary!

It is Firefox that is giving you problems.

My boss uses Firefox, and last week he had to break down and use Chrome because Firefox was acting up so bad.

The web designer is usually not the code guy. They aimed for the site working well on Explorer and Chrome. Sometimes Safari. My husband said they aimed for the.site working well on 90% of the browsers.

Almost no one worries about Firefox working well on a site any more. My husband is a web developer, and he was routinely told not to worry about Firefox.

As for the citizenship thing. Everyone is bitching about non citizens grabbing jobs. If the places does outside government contracts, they have no choice but to ask all those questions. The company can get fined or lose the contract. Veteran status probably means veterans get preferential treatment in getting a job.

Frankly, I would have used Explorer or Chrome instead of wasting an extra few hours fighting with those sites. The added suck part of Firefox is sometimes not all of the web site gets pulled up. I found that out the hard way on my kid's middle school web site. I have to use the web site to put money in a lunch account. Could not find the section AT ALL. Pulled it up in Chrome, and the section was there.

I use Firefox sometimes. My boss uses it 90% of the time. The one area it really sucks behind are commercial sites. Businesses assume everyone has Explorer or Chrome, and aren't willing to pay the developer/designer extra time to tweek it for Firefox.

Good luck on the job hunt. I hope you get the job you really want.

ETA: Email is a way screen out people. My BIL does not want to hire anyone over 40 because, "He's tired of fight with older people not using tech." Almost no one over 40 uses AOL. When the request about a position comes in with an AOL account, I doubt it even gets opened.

I thought that was weird, until I looked online. There are many articles about how what you use as an email address can date you. No many people are going to look at a sender [email protected]. That was a person emailing my BIL for a job.

Nothing unusual, same here in Sweden. Some recruiters at large companies don't even know anything about the subject they recruit for, and some are plain stupid. Experience comes with age they say, but i say it's more of an maturity/empathy issue, best recruiter i talked to was a young woman around 26 that interviewed me over a month ago. She was really cute.........

Anyway, i tend to stay away from recruitment companies, they have the same problem "Please use our crap system to apply for a job", not all of them have an upload option for a CV and personal application letter. Recently i've been called a few times by from as afar away as India, but they don't read my Linked in profile which point out some things.

Some of the things i've written is that i am specifically searching for a job in the area + cities nearby i can commute to, and only IT Security related jobs. Some of them still insist that i should move to Gothenburg and code web applications (something i'm uninterested in and the housing situation in Sweden makes impossible to find an apartment within < 5 years in large cities).

My advice is to create a linked in profile and let the recruiters contact you. Be respectful to those who deserve it, but do not fear removing anyone you've invited in to your network if they do something dumb. Use google documents and create a CV and a personal application letter that you can customise and export as PDF. Keep the timestamps in the header and update it when you export it so the recruiter can see that it is up to date information.

With a bit of effort you can skip the companies and have recruiters come to you instead, i really appreciate how things work nowadays.

I know that Firefox doesn't work with all website but I usually don't have issues on other websites and if I do those websites are crap irregardless of what browser I'm using. Furthermore Firefox is still used by a lot of people (even by some Linux users) and I would think that tech companies would at least make a better attempt to make their websites moe accomodating. I do have Chrome on my tablet and sometimes these sites run worse (as in more glitches, lockups, jumping buttons, etc) and I know that my tablet isn't the best in the world (a POS Samsung model) but to me it's more of an issue with the site. On the citizenship questions, yes, I know it's required by law but they really took it out of hand here unless they had big problems with people's citizenship.



I don't use or talk to recruiters since I had problems with them in my youth in the few times I did talk to them. I prefer to send my application/cover letter/resume through an email channel because I don't want my personal info floating around on some fly by night website. I live in a state where consumer protections and privacy aren't very good at all in practice and I do what I can to keep my personal info private. Also, I don't want anyone knowing that I'm applying for jobs and the security on a lot of these online forums and job sites is pretty bad, at least what I've seen and experienced. Google documents, same thing. I know it might be old school to think that but I worked with Silicon Valley and the tech industry many years ago and they make a lot of mistakes so I'm more vigilant than the average person in that regard.

On a related note, a lot of these Silicon Valley companies have a real creepy cult vibe to their culture. It's like walking into a store and everyone smiles at you like a mannequin...it's just unnerving to me. They all had the rhetoric of thinking outside the box and creativity and individuality and to be honest I didn't think that they followed any of that in practice. As an example I think Google called itself an 'Un-company' a few years ago. So, if they are or were an 'Un-Company', does that mean they employ 'un-employees' and 'un-managers'? Do you get an 'Un-salary' for doing 'un-Work' there? That's what bugs me.

Having worked in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, the millionaire geniuses had all left or were beginning to leave. I remember the social groups of various code-heads and those of us who were camp followers. I did technical writing (and continued to do so when I returned to my home state). But, the high-tech revolution had become corporatized, and even I morphed into marketing and public relations. These days, I am appalled with the staggeringly bad code coming out of committees where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I sometimes speak with code-heads and, trying not to insult them, I ask if they had ever heard of the phrase "plug and play." Most don't. Too bad.

As for working in tech, I would suggest jumping through the hoops that you must. After all, it is worth it once you get employed. Meanwhile, play nice and kvetch to your Teddy Bear. Tech is now something it never was before. You could help make it better.

I hope somebody does make it better. Technology is effing atrocious these days.

That would get you hired in my book.

Yep, the only thing that makes Google top is their search algorithym.
Facebook is pretty much propped up by investors - though they have ads now, which is becoming the death knell.

Most large organisations can't do crap, they get too big, groupthink is rife, office politics rule. And the whole thing is prone to boom and bust because of marketing / business trends. Which they only survive by layoffs.

This is why small companies or individuals can rise up. Not that they necessarily have a good idea, but they can actually implement it (without yes men) and run with it. Until they get too big, or bought out, or ruled by greedy investors.

I agree with you on this and I think it especially applies to tech and social media companies. Whereas a non-tech or non-social media company might start getting 'big' at around maybe 100 - 200 employees (your experiences may vary on this numerical range here) social media and tech get to be big at around maybe 20 - 30 people. In addition it seems like Silicon Valley is a huge hustle; a lot of businesses in tech don't seem real and I'm not surprised if a lot of them are scams of some sort.

I did want to add that I think Silicon Valley is a dinosaur not just in its mannerisms but in its business model. Most of Silicon Valley has one of two business plans. The first plan is to sell proprietary software that is expensive and has a relatively short lifespan. This expensive software sometimes requires service plans which add to the total cost of the software package. The second most common business model is the social media one where the software is free (or almost free) but you are essentially locked into the software for whatever you need it for. It's like someone who sells on eBay (or something similar) and is basically forced to use eBay's software for payments, inventory, receivables, etc. and makes it almost impossible to switch to something else or go on your own. Social media makes its money by selling its user data to whatever third party wants to use it. Who knows how much data has been sold by social media or to whom. I don't see these business models surviving much into the future given the move away from proprietary software in much of the business world outside of Silicon Valley.



I agree with your post here but this line seems a bit insulting to me. Did you really mean to say this?

I agree with your post here but this line seems a bit insulting to me. Did you really mean to say this?[/quote]
Not meant to be insulting, just a commentary about the interview processes in Silicon Valley. They can be maddening with their conditions and patronizing.

I knew that Silicon Valley was an arrogant place for a long time, pretty much ever since I was a teen. I also know that Silicon Valley in particular (and the western US overall) has a tendency of putting both job applicants and their employees through a gauntlet. I didn't work in Silicon Valley but over 13 years ago I worked with a company that was based in the San Diego area which dealt with Silicon Valley ALOT. The politics and games and workplace drama was bad back then and from what I've seen it's worse today. It's funny since Silicon Valley thinks itself to be the center of the universe and they drop the ball on the most basic of things. The whole thing about going through some BS interview gauntlet just to grovel at the feet of a fascist fratboy is ridiculous given the condition of the industry as a whole. They aren't THAT great in Silicon Valley, hell, I question whether they can get their software right sometimes.



If you meant to say this, then yes it is a condescending post. Don't do it again.

There is something else I wanted to mention about Silicon Valley and employment (I'm not done yet ). I think that anyone with Aspergers or autism should be very careful about searching for work in this place. Silicon Valley has a reputation of supposedly being very Aspie friendly and such. From my experiences in dealing with them I would say that quite a few people in Silicon valley, if not the majority of them, who claim to have Aspergers probably don't. Granted, there are some who legitimately are on the spectrum but I think a lot of people claim to have Aspergers out there when in reality they are something far worse. Realistically, Silicon Valley comes across as more narcissistic instead of Aspie or autistic from my experience. In fact I suspect that Aspies are used and misused out in the Valley quite a bit. Keep your guard up if you do decide to go to Silicon Valley.

To the bumfaces that assume people over 40 are not worth hiring. I got news for you. Someday you will be over 40. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I'm 56, and I was hired for a part-time library job. They knew I had a "regular" full time job when they hired me. I work both jobs.