Yes, Networking is Important, but Stop Using it to Gaslight Us

I really don't want to be one of those 20-something coaches here, but it's worth mentioning for this I run three meet-ups. I guess I might as well take the time to plug them here:

I do this not (just) to take the opportunity to advertise them here, but also to make a point.

At one of these meet-ups recently, there was a very enthusiastic fellow who was doling advice how to anyone that would even stand nearby and pretend to listen about how to get a job. He had his own SaaS company that was pretty cool, but near the end of the meetup, as I revealed I was looking for a job in tech and talking with someone from a company I formerly worked at about a job at the client they were at, he start inundating me with advice. The conversation went something like this (condensed so you don't have to deal with the pure wordiness I did):

"You need to send your resume to jobs even if you don't hit all the qualifications"

"I do, but they want mid-to senior level people of ....."

(interrupts me) "Then stop marketing yourself as a junior and market yourself as a mid-level!"

"I already am, I have projects to show...."

"Well then put that into your resume and make the resume fit the job description!"

"I do that, I have a resume for this and that type of job..."

(still interrupting, because of course) "Well you hack the system by writing a bot to scrape the recent connections of all the recruiter for the job, as those are people they are getting ready to hire, and then make your LinkedIn profile lok like just like their's!"

(finally losing my patience a bit) "I have done all this, and the issue is that companies have raised the bar quite a bit and..."

"Well then do your resume better I guess"

At which point I walked away, because I know myself well enough to know I could make this end very badly.

But let's recap:

A person running three meetups in tech is getting schooled about the importance of networking and reaching out to people.

I think the genders of this situation too are not coincidental. Reverse them, and this would have played out very differently. I know, because I see many of these conversations, because I, y'know, run three meetups and have been going to meetups since I first came out of college in 2018 (sorry not sorry).

I talk about this not to roast this particular one guy, but to further illustrate the toxic ideas of meritocracy being peddled.

You don't have to spend long on LinkedIn to get immediately inundated with posts about if you still don't have a job, you just need to network more. (Thankfully, there are just as many post whining about needing 2 years of Java/Python/some proprietary technology that no one would know unless they happened to work at a company that used it 10 years ago).

Doing research for this article, the first post I saw in my feed was someone claiming LinkedIn was a level play-field (and then I found out you can't put pictures in LI articles)

I am going to spare you the rigamoral on how much harder it is for women and POCs to get into certain spaces. I would even go so far as to say that if you are not at least familiar with this concept, it is willful ignorance on your part, and you are probably not even reading this article. But that's OK. I think the vast majority of people actually fancy themselves egalitarians who believe anyone should be able to succeed, but don't understand how bad it is actually out there for those very different and not like them.

Want to be petty that I am not using enough "facts and reasoning" for you?

Here's a source, have fun: https://www.cio.com/article/201905/women-in-tech-statistics-the-hard-truths-of-an-uphill-battle.html

This is not to say that anyone pushing this "networking will save us all" advice necessarily always intends to be this in-your-face as the guy in the meet-up I spoke about and these various LI influencers (even some of them may have really put their money where their mouth is). But with the number of people I see claiming to be champions for networking and getting people into jobs they wouldn't otherwise, we need a reality check.

A quick search will net you a job application like this:

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Junior Java Developer

TransPerfect, Boulder Colorado

Required Skills:

A minimum of 3 years coding in Java

Knowledge of Eclipse or IntelliJ

Experience building and testing web-based applications

Comfortable writing SQL Queries, designing tables and communicating with databases through code

Excellent debugging and problem-solving skills

Experience deploying applications

Good communication skills

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent

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I don't think you need to be in the tech space to realize that 3 years being required in anything does not constitute a junior job.

But I already hear the whining now:

"They are just wishlists, everyone knows that! If you network you can get past them and the unreasonable HR"

So I have had several senior dev friends try to get me a job, only for me to be told I "don't have enough experience". The reality check we need to have is that companies have become choosy beggars. They complain on and on about not being able to find the right people, and then put requirements like these, and THEN make it increasingly difficult to go around HR. In the struggle to keep up with the sheer number of applicants, HR and recruiters have started to employ tricks to filter people that are backfiring. But these same HR and recruiters don't care, because they did their job as far as anyone is concerned.

So stop peddling advice about the importance of networking - at this point its like telling people the importance of saving - show it, and help facilitate it, rather than throwing a bunch of names and connections at people, and then wiping your hands and saying "I did all I could".

At some point, hire me, or them, or shut up.