I was dead wrong about networking events being a waste of time

After 5 years in IT, I finally went to a local meetup in Austin last month expecting nothing but awkward small talk, but I got a solid lead on a junior DevOps role from a guy who'd been hiring for 3 weeks. Anyone else find real connections at those things after writing them off?

2 comments

2 Comments

gray_perez5227d ago

Austin's got enough tech bros without you finding a free DevOps job there.

lindareed26d ago

And honestly that's exactly what people don't get about these events. It's not about the surface level stuff, it's about timing and being in the right room when someone is frustrated enough to vent about their hiring problems. The whole "tech bro" thing is tired too, because most of the people I've met at Austin meetups are just regular folks trying to solve problems, not some hype machine. There's this weird gatekeeping where people act like you're cheating by building real connections instead of grinding applications online, but the hiring guy literally told me my resume would've been filtered out by their automated system if I hadn't talked to him first. So yeah, the old guard might hate it, but the system's broken enough that showing up to a meetup is practically a life hack at this point.