I don’t know much about poker, but I read The Biggest Bluff a couple of years ago. The book really opened my eyes on how much chance plays a role in our lives. Call it luck, or call it randomness; chance has a lot do with our sucess and failures. More than we like to admit. The book makes the case that the game of life can be played like the game of poker. Poker, like life, has uncertainties and losses, but if you have a strategy and put yourself in positions where the odds of winning are favorable, in the long run, you can "win".

With finding a Software Engineering job for example, where the demand for inexperienced programmers is lower than the supply, when you’re just 1 person out of 100 people that apply for a junior Dev job, if the other 99 are equally qualified, your chances at getting that job is 1%. Obviously this is almost never the case right. If you've done all of the things (networking, solid portfolio, real world projects, etc), the things most people don’t do, then that puts you closer to the top tier. That will bump a couple of percentage points in the odds. If you do even more, like having a direct contact in the company that will vouch for you, or if you build something truly novel and remarkable, then you're even closer to “winning”.

The trick is to get your percentage as close as possible to at least 40%. The only way you could reach 50% is if there’s only 1 other candidate and both are equally qualified.

Obviously I'm simplifying things and there's so many other variables when it comes to applying and getting a highly desirable job.

The Struggle is Real

Easier said than done right? I'm currently struggling with this. I signed up with Pathrise and I'm starting to doubt if it's working out. I'm trying to hit a quota of 20 applications a week. I'm sending out cover letters. I'm hitting the LeetCode. I'm doing all of the things. Have gotten some responses. I've had two to three occasions where I've been sent to take a coding test. I don't think I passed one of them. 80% of the outcome of this strategy has been crickets and the rest have been emails with the "sorry but moving with other candidates" auto response.

It's exhausting. It's emotionally draining.

But that’s the long game.

Jan 06 2023 by Jay Cruz

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