I was looking for work last year and had a pretty weird experience with one particular place. Just like the lady in don’t look up, I’ve been haunted by this - why, how… I’d like to share this story and get some opinions. I’ve been working with three.js for almost ten years now, and have been contributing to the project. I managed to tackle a couple of interesting and useful topics early on so there is a high probability that someone learning about this is learning from my GitHub projects, or some of the tutorial/articles. For years the only documentation for a pretty advanced but esoteric feature was a medium article that I wrote and it was the first thing that would show up on google. Another, now widely used feature, was documented the same way, and for at least three years was the first hit on Google, and the npm package I have for it still seems to be in use despite the library having its own implementation. I actually do run into people interviewing me who are familiar with this work, and I think it helped me land jobs. Thus, I consider myself fairly competent when it comes to this library and webgl in general. I never tinkered or contributed to react, but I’ve been writing UI with it for five years now - so, some competence with react as well. I never managed to get these half a million TC packages, but I managed to get my base just shy of 200k, and keep it there. So, last year, armed with all of this, I responded to an email from a recruiter regarding some AV group within Apple. It took me a while to figure out what’s going on, my experience with (3rd party?) recruiters was that they “forward” me to the company and they take it from there. This was different, the recruiter was from TekSystems and the position was some sort of a contract, temp to perm thing. First, $80/h was offered, second, they REALLY wanted someone to come sit in Santa Clara. I said that this seems interesting since it’s Apple and the stack is exactly what I do. But I also said that I’ve lived in SF for ten years, am not at all keen on coming back, especially for a low ball. I also said that I’m used to having benefits and vacation and such, and that I had all that for more money. She kept on pushing though, I broke and gave some number with which I’d consider doing this type of work but not really relocating or anything - say $120/h. I got asked to send my resume and some sort of a cover letter. I even got asked to fix a typo in the cover letter by capitalizing “three.js”… I was about to tell her some things about that “typo”, but she preempted my email and wanted to schedule another meet with some seemingly important dude, who turned out to be from TekSystems as well. Neither the possibility of a higher rate nor the relocation stuff were confirmed at this point. The second interview was just some weird high level not too tech overview of my background, before they would send me to actually talk to Apple. So I finally get scheduled to interview with a bunch of engineers and I think I was given some instructions like not to mention compensation. Since I do like to talk shop, had free time, but mostly out of curiosity I went through with this. I was under the impression that I did the 4 hours of tech interviews well. The graphics/library part was very high level, I didn’t have to code, just sort of talk shop with a peer. Was asked about some problems and was able to discuss them very in depth. The JS/language feature one I wrapped up in 10 minutes, the rest of the time we used to chat. Algorithm and react were non eventful, ive done them correct and fast, and was very mindful of being humble and per “cracking the coding interview”. However, as humble as I may have been through these 4 hours, the ease of the interview made me cocky when the leadership one came about. I unleashed a bunch of questions on how tf did I end up in this situation and why. Why am I interviewing for a contract role and not full time, given that I am interviewing at other places and none of them are contract roles? Why do I feel that TekSystems owe me, just because I answered a phone one day? It’s not like they’re paying me to interview with you. I actually don’t remember much about how this portion went, but I was asked by all of them if I’m willing to relocate. My answer was “yes but for a lot of money”, I may have elaborated a bit on this with the eng manager during the last round. I don’t really remember him clarifying anything but he did chuckle often. I got ghosted after this, and neither TekSystems nor Apple reached out. Ok, so if this wall of text is on topic, and you’ve read through it, could you provide some words of wisdom on all of this? Why does TekSystems exist? Why do others use their services? If webgl/threejs/web graphics in general, coupled with front end / full stack experience are hot, how do they expect someone to do that for $80/h? I was at $175k, unlimited vacation, benefits and stock options and working from mexico that year. How can someone expect a person to move to the Bay Area on $80/h without at least some sort of a sign on bonus? Why did they low ball me instead of engaging in a bidding war? I interviewed at four other AV companies, all of them are still looking for this profile. In fact this ad (now directly from Apple) prompted me to post this. Had I reached out to Apple directly after all of this what would have happened? What lesson could I draw from all of this if any? Never ever talk to a recruiter outside of a company? #interview #tech Oh ps, here’s the excerpt about the typo, would you lose your shit or keep it cool? —————————- Everything looks good , there’s just one nit-picky thing in your resume – In the first line of your experience you need to capitalize Three.js (small I know, but I would hate for a small typo to mess anything up). Could you just give that a quick fix when you have a second?
Tldr?
Move along sir, nothing to see here.
Ok. Then TC or GTFO
Uhhh nobody forced you to go through teksystems lol. That’s how third party contractor vendors work. They are used to quickly fill roles, sometimes when a team needs work done but don’t have the headcount, often with lesser quality talent (not always, bit of a generalization, could be ppl who prefer contracting or not good interviewers, but as you say most of the top talent in a competitive field can interview full time and get signing bonuses). Also it’s fine for u to reach out to Apple yourself but maybe avoid the same group.
“Oh hey thanks for letting me know that company X has this need, I’ll go reach out to them directly” was pretty much what I should have done?
Going by this, if I have any self-respect, I simply won’t talk to third party recruiters? I landed a full time role once through CyberCoders, but this was the worst job of my career. I guess I answered my own question :)
Teksystems will have some kind of agreement with Apple that they need candidate this criteria, they just want to find someone and fill the place so they can be profited, they don't check the background of that person or what he wants. They just try to trick people and make them join the position. Contract roles have low expectations and low hiring bar (in most of the cases but not all) which is why they are paid low. It's not ideal to take contractual roles for several reasons out of which you mentioned few.
Sounds like if one has an ounce of self respect and is not desperate, they shouldn’t even talk to recruiters like this. But then, shouldn’t this apply to pretty much every engineer in the Bay Area? It’s still so weird and confusing. I feel like I didn’t waste my time because I was bored, I like to talk shop and I guess I learned (am still learning?) something from this. But on both the recruiters end and Apple, it feels like a waste of time.
You're right. But there are many people who aren't talented/don't work hard/run out of luck and can't crack interviews which are harder. So for those, this is a good alternative as the bar will be lower. This is just one of the reasons I know, there might be others reasons too.
In addition to your capitalization error, you've also lazily abbreviated a word. The correct spelling is Three Dot JavaScript.
😂
sir this is a wendy’s