DEV Community: Cserei Zoltán

Ordering a pizza is more transparent than applying to a job

Cserei Zoltán — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 19:09:51 +0000

It's Friday, you've been through a tough week. You open your delivery app of choice, spend 5 minutes and $20 maybe ordering a pizza to sit back and relax. Seconds after you've hit order, a notification pops up "A human being has seen your order". An hour later, you can forget about the entire interaction. Yet, you've grown to expect this level of transparency and get angry if that pizza is late or cold.

Why don't we expect the same from jobs?

Using the above metrics, let's look at a typical job application and see how ridiculous the comparison gets. Time. For a typical job application, you often spend days compiling your details and if it's successful, it can often define years of your life. Money. Instead of the mere $20, given industry rates, a job can easily become a six-figure question. Yet, we're kind of okay with not hearing back from a company. Nobody likes it, but we've kind of accepted this is how things work.

Some companies are nicer and they do give feedback. However, given the volume of applications they often have to deal with, what we get is usually a template email where it's a good sign if we're not called {{firstName}}.

Is there an acceptable compromise?

Our mission at Moonka.space is alleviating some of the issues that have become ubiquitous in the tech hiring space. Learning from the open startup and building in public movements, there's a clear lesson: share as much data as you can without hurting interests. It helps every party involved. There's clarity, transparency and learning.

We apply the same principle to job applications. Teams can set up stages, which is usual for any hiring tool. However, they can also attach public labels to these stages. Developers immediately get a notification if their application is updated. No need for verbose emails to be written or read. A label changes, without any effort from the company and with all the information the applicant wants to know.

And to bring pizza closer to tech jobs: once somebody sees your application, you'll know it.

In case something more needs to be said, there's always the option to say more. Do you want extra pepperoni? Maybe you want whipped cream on your Hawaii pizza to piss off even more Italians? You got it.

But when one word is all that's there, we don't have an excuse to make things more complicated than getting pizza.

May we take your order?

Whether you're a developer looking for a job or you represent a company hiring, create an account in less time than it takes to order that pizza and we'll set everything up for you.

The layoffs are a precursor to a new layout

Cserei Zoltán — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 21:22:07 +0000

You are sitting at your desk, your throat clenched. You heard the rumours, and you can't help but wonder if your phone is going to buzz at the same time half of your teams' will. You may be thinking about the bathroom renovation you've been planning. The Aspen ski break you feel like you deserve. Which you do. You think of the cheers you received from your friends when you got your shiny new job. You wonder about the career trajectory you envisioned on your first day.

Imagining the situation above is how I remind myself not to be too loud with my optimism about what is going on. Because first of all, that is what's in me: optimism. More on that in a bit.

Agents of change

Seeing the headlines every day about thousands of people being laid off made me numb. It's like my relationship with war news. Slightly ashamed that the numbers don't cut as deep as they did back in February. Yet, there is a significant difference. The people affected in the layoffs each represent opportunities. There are now tens of thousands of talented people looking for new jobs.

For many, what's happened will be the final straw. A new generation of companies will pop up lead by people with the know-how attained at some of the current giants of the industry.

Is the industry in its ruins?

I am convinced the issues are not as bad as they seem. The average age of the FAANG (or rather: MANGO) companies is... 31 years. Each of them still tries hard to look hip and young. Yet I also happen to be exactly 31 years old and let me tell you, hangovers have changed fundamentally in the last couple years.

Breathe in, breathe out. What is happening is completely normal. Markets are cyclical, the dominancy of certain companies isn't set in stone either. Remember Xerox? Kodak? IBM? Sun? Blackberry? Or, for the younger folk: Digg? StumbleUpon? Flickr? All the web 2.0 gradients-and-weird-spelling mess?

Incidentally, some of the biggest companies of our time were founded right before the dot-com crash. The few who survived ended up defining the last two decades. These giants might now look like they have some structural issues. Nevertheless, the industry as a whole looks as exciting as ever.

What comes next will be marvellous

Put aside the unfortunate scams unveiled recently, the crypto world finally makes the internet feel like the wild west again. AI! Fiddle around with some of the newer generative models and you start to question the meaning of our existence. AR! After decades of waiting, we finally have actually immersive headsets. Mix these up, and maybe you get a metaverse that's better than the one made by the company named after it.

Quantum computing can't wait to escape the big laboratories and see what small teams of curious people can do with it. Fusion is around the corner and a new generation of world-changing companies will pop up around it. The climate needs our help too, and I'm glad some of you will now try to tackle it.

To each of you: I share your pain and I am sorry about all the stress and chaos this is causing in your life. But I am sure in the end you will come out triumphant!

Meaningful work matters

Cserei Zoltán — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 08:31:08 +0000

For the past couple of years, I’ve been collecting experiences and ideas regarding what makes work meaningful. It’s not an easy nut to crack, but there are a few solid hints out there if you listen carefully.

Moonka.space is built on the simple idea that a working relationship is just as much an opportunity for the employer as it is for the candidate. Once you integrate this concept into your thinking process, it changes your perspective.

Good recipes are simple

Talking to some of the smartest developers, it became apparent that the recipe for a good job is simple: we need exciting problems to solve regularly, nice people surrounding us and a decent compensation for our work.

However, the way a lot of job listings approach each of these aspects has become problematic, often driven by HR jargon. Let’s take a look at all three mentioned areas.

First, cut to the chase with technology. Contrary to what most job listings would make you believe, it’s not only cutting edge technologies that make a job interesting. Some people indeed applaud companies that have the curiosity and the resources to try out the latest tools and like to use libraries that the rest of the industry won’t hear about for a year. That can indeed be a cool proposition and makes people feel like they are pioneers. And they are!

Others, however appreciate stable, tried-and-true techniques. Heck, some even take pride in the fact that they’ve been around for long enough that they understand legacy systems that the rest of us can’t even start up.

Understanding the requirements and capabilities on both sides of the aisle and communicating them clearly helps in creating better opportunities. Taking a look at the decisions behind the technologies used, the daily tasks involving them and the way a company thinks about its future technical decisions clears up a lot of misunderstandings before they even occur. And let’s not even talk about the banalities like mixing up Java and JavaScript, everyone is tired of those stories.

Just like with technical decisions, there are also a lot of cultural decisions which can’t be sorted. Move fast and break things? Test everything thoroughly and assure the highest quality? A vibrant young team where people like to grab the occasional beer after work or a well-knit group where most people have children waiting for them at home? A company led by technical founders who might stumble with sales every now and then or a professional managerial culture where sales are guaranteed but convincing your boss why you need higher test coverage might be challenging? In each of these cases, some prefer the former options, while some the latter ones. But everyone prefers clarity regarding these choices as soon as they first come across a company.

Finally: while few people are comfortable talking openly about financials, when it comes to finding a job, it is essential. A lot of people like receiving a regular and steady salary, while others will sacrifice the comfort of a paid vacation for the benefit of a higher hourly rate. One thing that is common in all of us is that we don’t like wasting our time on either side of an interview where the expected compensation and the expected costs are not even in the same order of magnitude. Being open about payment, bonuses and benefits just saves a lot of time for everyone involved in the process.

A clearer hiring process

Moonka.space is built with these ideas in mind. Company profiles and jobs posted are always iterated on during discussions with team members of the company. There is not a single word that has not been questioned and looked into.

If you are an employer: after creating and paying for your job listing, you can expect a call from us to help both you, us and your future applicants better understand your opening. We help you better understand who you’re looking for, and once that’s cleared, we give you the platform so that they can find you, too. Our goal is to showcase the fundamentals of the position and your company. You have an air hockey table and brew your own beer? Fine, these are nice things to have and it's okay to be proud of the cherry on the top of the cake, too. But what's inside the cake is what matters.

Once the applications start showing up, you need to manage them. And what better way to do that than to let the team that’s about to expand handle it? We have the tools for that. No unnecessarily complex charts, no fancy reports. We recreated the office coffee machine discussion where the people involved can easily discuss applications.

A personal note

For more than two years already, I have worn a few too many hats. Just developing the application consisted of nearly two thousand commits and many thousands of lines of code. I have written policy documents, gauged our competition, researched taxation rules, balanced a marketing budget, talked to potential users and potential customers. I haven't been so proud of an achievement as I am now for a long time.

However, and I'm trying not to sound like I am giving myself an Oscar here: all this wouldn't have been possible without the relentless help of a lot of people. In fact, for the past couple months I've been thinking daily about how lucky I am. Some people just showed patience where patience wasn't due anymore. Others calmed me in stressful situations, of which there were many. Folks ahead of me on this path gave invaluable advice when it was most needed and some even contributed to the costs of the project, which ended up being considerably more than initially expected. I am immensely grateful to all of you.

I will share but a list of first names in alphabetical order, so that I am not invading anyone's privacy too much: Anna, Apor, Attila, Ayberk, Ádám, Ágnes, Ákos, Áron, Balázs, Balázs, Barnabás, Bence, Bence, Bettina, Borbála, Botond, Bálint, Csilla, Csongor, Damján, Dániel, Dorka, Erika, Éva, Giorgia, Hunor, Hunor, Izabella, Johanna, János, Jonas, József, Kata, Kinga, Kristóf, Krisztina, Levente, László, Lilla, Mohit, Márk, Olga, Orsolya, Pál, Péter, Réka, Réka, Róbert, Sándor, Sándor, Sergio, Soma, Szilamér, Tamás, Tibor, Tímea, Valentin, Valentine, Zita, Zoltán, Zoltán, Zoltán, Zsolt. Thank you all!

Dirty tip: How to remember weird commands you sometimes need

Cserei Zoltán — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 11:28:50 +0000

We all have these cases where an annoying problem pops up every now and then, fixing them thoroughly is not necessarily a priority, you don't have the time to dig into them, you just need a quick fix.

And sometimes these issues repeat themselves and, again, you just have a thousand more important things to do.

Let me give you an example.

Every now and then PostgreSQL stops working on my Mac.

As it turns out, it's caused by a dirty shutdown, like the battery dying. From the scope of this article, it doesn't really matter.

I've learned that the solution to my problem is the following command:

rm -f /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

Now I don't know about you, but my brain is not compatible with learning this path. Yet, I have to type it every two weeks or so.

What I do is prefix it with a non-command token. It looks like this:

POSTGRESFIX rm -f /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

Now, every time I need this, I just have to type history | grep POSTGRESFIX and voilà. It yield a command not found with no side effects, but it gets stored in your history.

This could mean turning one problem into another: you have to remember the tokens you've used.

What I do is I include FIX in all of them. That way, history | grep FIX will bring up a list of all the commands that I need but I don't like or don't bother to learn.

This is dirty, it might not sound like a professional solution. But sometimes we need to move fast and these things are okay.