Have you ever had a brutal editor (preferably someone you barely know) read over your resume and give you some feedback? You might be surprised by the results!
Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#12Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#13What exactly does this mean? Do you have a bunch of repos that are tutorial projects or did you create something yourself? Are they deployed? What state is the code in, does it look prod ready? Are there tests?
When an artist applies for a position they bring a prepared portfolio not a bunch of sketchbooks. Is your Github a portfolio or a sketchbook?
Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#14Offer to implement a feature for free or meaningfully contribute to one of their open source projects to demonstrate you have the technical chops to be a productive member of their team.
Also, besides technical skills, you have to be a good cultural fit. Make sure you do your homework what they are looking for in candidates more generally.
Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#15If you're relying on a resume for work, you're probably being inefficient in the first place. All the jobs I got were not through a resume. The resume is just there to justify to the boss's boss why they're hiring me.
Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#16Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#17Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#18If you're relying on a resume for work, you're probably being inefficient in the first place. All the jobs I got were not through a resume. The resume is just there to justify to the boss's boss why they're hiring me.
What method did you use to get your first job?
Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#19Once you actually work in the industry for a while, you realize that most newbie side projects are incredibly small and distressingly unimpressive. Since you've never worked in a production codebase, your internal metric of difficulty and value is WAY off. You might think you have a really great Github, but I suspect that you need samples at least 4x as complex as what you've already done.
Remember that "CS Degree" is simply a indicator that you are solid hire. Hiring managers are looking to maximize the chance that you're worth the effort, so without the CS degree you'll need to work much much harder to prove your worth. Definitely possible! But not easy.
Oh, and don't lie. If you claim experience and interview with me, I'll drill you in detail about your claimed experience and what you learned. I'll figure out you were lying, and that's not a good hiring signal.
Re: Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
What method did you use to get your first job?
Joined a programming agency run by a friend of my father. I did poorly on the technical interview, had bad grades, but the boss knew that I made games and went to a really good school so they took a chance on me.