u/JigMaJox

I've read that non white expats get a very different welcome from whites in Saudi.

Is this true ?

Am based in the UK and considering maybe moving to Saudi for work but I've heard that the locals will automatically give you a lower tier treatment if you are a person of colour.

I recently applied for a dev job at Sains and was given a hacker-job online test.

Unfortunately the online test environment for hacker-job crashed 45 minutes in and I couldn’t run my solution to test, did the best I could anyway and made a recording of the borked environment.

I emailed support for hacker-Job and Sainsbury immediately after.

Hacker-job replied a full week later and acknowledged that they system screwed up, they issued me a new test which I completed fine, but by then the job seems to have gone offline.

I reached out again to Sains letting them know of the situation but they have not replied to that email either.

I know I completed the second test fine and the first broken test was also well within my capabilities, fairly okay Java / Spring Boot type tasks.

Its a frustrating situation, having something out of my hand ruin a test which I know I could pass and being met with just silence from the company when reaching out to them even when their test provider has admitted their system had a problem.

Have any of you had any experiences applying with Sains ?

Hey, am in the middle of slogging through some tough and depressing life shit, I need some games to take me out of my mind tonight for a couple of hours before bed time.

I was kinda thinking of some indie / small studio , niche games that are kinda creepy.

I am kind of in the mood for games like strange antiquities / horticulture, is this game trying to kill me, last report/ dark wood.

Not looking for anything too full on like alien isolation (although i love the game) , i just want something i can relax and chill before time.

Hello !

I've recently been given an online screening test to do, rules say that I will be recorded on webcam and screenshare my browser.

Fair enough, with Ai its too easy to cheat in these sort of questions, but the rules also say :

"Important Note: Please be reminded that the assessment platform includes camera monitoring and tab-switching detection features to ensure assessment integrity. Any form of cheating, assistance, or dishonest behavior during the test will result in immediate disqualification from the recruitment process."

I want to know if that means am not even allowed to look up things like documentation on Oracle.com on Spring.io to check a method name or something like that...

I've emailed the company back immediately and they have been completely silent....

any thoughts about this, would something like looking up documentation be cheating ?

what would you do ?

Am a Java dev who got made redundant from a fintech after 9.5 years Jan 2025. Took some time off to go visit family abroad and came back in May and have been applying for dev roles in London with very little luck or even response.

I've taken the free time to build a couple of apps while doing self taught courses in areas I feel lacking and just generally updating myself. Previous employer resisted with every fibre of their soul to embrace newer technology "back in my days..." was a very commonly heard phrase, so I do feel I need to catch up.

But its been hell so far, I've gotten a few interviews which although tends to go rather well, doesn’t eventually land me the role.

For example

I got through 5 rounds of interviews for a global consultancy firm, the final one being the HR round which felt as positive as all the previous ones, the bloke was telling me about the dress code and what days to come to the office, then ..... he just vanished after telling me he'd be reaching back with the paperwork to sign.

The job recruiter was as confused as I was and suggested possibly the role itself was killed since they were hiring multiple individuals and none of his other candidates got in.

Another role, got through 3 rounds of interview for a remote job for a company based outside of London, then they suddenly tell me "oh btw the role isn’t remote any more, you'll have to come in 4 days a week". With 2 hours of commute, i dropped out.

Third example, got through screening, technical interview, then lost on the third round with head of engineering , they went with someone who was more familiar with their tech.

I feel that I do fairly well in interviews, am quite comfortable with people and marketing myself but its just that I seem to get so few opportunities to get that far. I just dont see that many mid level roles, I DO see lots of senior roles which I dont feel I got the experience for or a few more junior roles which paid less than my previous one.

Its wrecking me mentally not being in employment for so long and feel awful having to ask my parents for help to stay afloat...

what am i doing wrong here? what can i improve?

Is the market just dead for mid level dev roles at the moment ?

https://preview.redd.it/tbzdezou723h1.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=739c01e4146459c771ef4a0f6fc75e53728864ce

i know , i know .... its not strictly pc related but thought it was funny.

Needed to cool my room in the heatwave with little breeze coming in, so i made this contraption to either pull or push air into my room.

Had these ekwb fans from a previous build and never used them, couldnt even sell them for % 60 off on ebay. Used an ac to pwm to power it from a mains socket.

Actually kinda worked, knocked about 2C from my room after 30-45 mins.

After seeing a few youtube psycopaths killing entire outposts in fun ways, I decided to give it a shot.

I planted 1 timed C4 at the reactor in a separatist outpost and it pretty much fked up the entire thing since I had stolen the 2 suits the mechanics needed to repair the hull.

It was glorious, I went around from room to room letting the water in and watching people pop from the pressure..... but what happens then ?

Doesnt anything happen once you kill the last person ?

Hey just started the game a day ago and am slowly learning.

Having a problem dealing with one of the early missions, am supposed to be getting some quartz near one of the settlements and hunting a pack of creatures.

Problem is am not too sure how to do any of it....

I moved the sub super close to the quartz as the captain, set the autopilot to maintain position.

ordered a crewmate on the forward coil gun...

Switched to another crew mate and swam out of the sub with a suit and a plasma cutter....

i cant seem to find the quartz.... i switch back to the captain to see where the deposit was relative to the sub.... except the sub is on its way back to the last settlement leaving behind the poor bastard in the suit.

Try to navigate back.... start taking damage from these creatures shooting spines through the sub...

not hearing a lot of shooting happeneing from our side, switched to the guy controlling the guns and i kill a couple of the things attacking us, back to the captain and find out the sub is once again in auto pilot moving back to the settlement while the stranded crewmate probably wondering where hell the sub went.

how am I supposed to be playing this ? :S

what am i doing wrong ?

why does the autopilot just start moving away the second am controlling someone else?

Hello

I have rewritten my CV into a much neater 2 page version to reflect my 10 YOE from my old bloated one.

Am not getting much in the way of call backs lately for roles which I think would really match my CV (very same tech stack and skills as my previous role). Am wondering if there is something still a bit off about my CV, can you advise ?

I have changed from 4 pages of bloat to 2 pages in a single column cv with my professional summary in one paragraph up top saying what industry and tech i worked with. Followed by my work experience and ending in my personal projects ( the java ones up top) and education.

https://preview.redd.it/6eij5kwasb1h1.png?width=2524&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b4f61bc9de5531a2139a88017968b29c6c3854a

There is one problem with my cv that i cannot seem to fix, its the lack of quantitative impact, eg i increased revenue by x% or whatever.

Am not entirely sure how to fix that, my previous role was about bug fixing / adding new features across a suite of software the company sells, am not too sure how to get some quantitative stuff to write about there. I was just assigned a ticket from our board and did my job writing code to patch bugs or add new functionality while keeping to our coding standards and made sure it got through testing with no new issues.

thats literally it...