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Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

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Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#11

Post by xwolfi »

pikamonad wrote: post #6
smt88 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would whiteboard you > you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov As someone who also hires software people, I would urge you to review the evidence on whiteboarding. It's difficult to discard your own anecdotal evidence, but hiring has no control group -- you have no idea how many great people you're missing as a result of whiteboarding. The reasons against whiteboarding have been discussed here man…

While these items might be true, as an interviewer you are not trying to solve for “find all good candidates” but, instead, are solving for “find one good enough and better than the rest”. Anymore, I love that I have a clear path on how to obtain a very high six figure gig with plenty of resources to get there. I’ll gladly play that game, with enthusiasm. When others focus on the plight of the interviewee, others are…

Depends, I don't think you care all that much about coding skills. You don't want a cripple, but you want a diva even less. You can take a learning developer with an amazing passion for learning, and building shit while you must refuse a guy who say he's leet coding and shit on everyone trying to learn from him :D

Depends what industry you work in, but where I am, it's more about accepting to switch team and language during hiring freeze, spend a week or two on legacy retro spec'ing, tell business users that you failed your impossible deadline, and fix your own crap honestly. Nothing leet about it, just brutal honesty, courage and loyalty to get a six figure where I am.

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#13

Post by smt88 »

pikamonad wrote: post #6
smt88 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would whiteboard you > you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov As someone who also hires software people, I would urge you to review the evidence on whiteboarding. It's difficult to discard your own anecdotal evidence, but hiring has no control group -- you have no idea how many great people you're missing as a result of whiteboarding. The reasons against whiteboarding have been discussed here man…

While these items might be true, as an interviewer you are not trying to solve for “find all good candidates” but, instead, are solving for “find one good enough and better than the rest”. Anymore, I love that I have a clear path on how to obtain a very high six figure gig with plenty of resources to get there. I’ll gladly play that game, with enthusiasm. When others focus on the plight of the interviewee, others are…

> leetcoding, white-boarding, practicing, reading up on blind, etc.

These things have no relationship with whether someone is productive, constructive to the team, or good at coding.

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#14

Post by thetrost »

jaabe wrote: post #8

I’ve never hired someone who was self-taught, not because self-taught people can’t be equal or better, but because you’re trying to buy security and stability. The most expensive mistake you can make as a manager is hiring the wrong person, and self-educated people just aren’t worth the risk when you have a dozen other candidates who are great. I’m Danish though and things are a little different here because educatio…

Yeah, nobody gets fired for buying IBM. I don't know how the market for good developers is in Denmark, but I think restricting your potential employees to just formally trained limits your potential as team/company.

edit: Plus, I know quite a lot of formally trained developers who at some point just stopped learning. To me that is much more dangerous than not having a formal education in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#15

Post by drenvuk »

smt88 wrote: post #4
drenvuk wrote: post #2

1. I would whiteboard you and vet your previous clients/projects. This also assumes I have time. Make sure you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov. I've seen bad code from people who have made decent looking projects. When I looked deeper I just saw copy pastes from stackoverflow. 2. This makes it harder - just learn react, new ES stuff and webpack if you want to focus on front end, it doesn't take lo…

> I would whiteboard you > you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov As someone who also hires software people, I would urge you to review the evidence on whiteboarding. It's difficult to discard your own anecdotal evidence, but hiring has no control group -- you have no idea how many great people you're missing as a result of whiteboarding. The reasons against whiteboarding have been discussed here man…

My whiteboarding consists of a mix of three things:

1. Invert a binary tree (tree based and simplistic) 2. Open a file, parse it in a simple way and then write to a new file. (file systems, strings) 3. Design a barebones twitter/reddit, etc. (architecture)

No dynamic programming, no esoteric stuff. Just can they understand tree structures, do they have a grasp on file systems, and do they have a modicum of design sense.

It doesn't need to be hard. After that the rest of proving themselves happens on the job. This isn't for humiliation, I just want to filter out the people who I would waste time on with further vetting and training. If the candidate cares they should be able to meet my appropriately low bar.

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#16

Post by winrid »

drenvuk wrote: post #2

1. I would whiteboard you and vet your previous clients/projects. This also assumes I have time. Make sure you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov. I've seen bad code from people who have made decent looking projects. When I looked deeper I just saw copy pastes from stackoverflow. 2. This makes it harder - just learn react, new ES stuff and webpack if you want to focus on front end, it doesn't take lo…

Unrealistic? Half the people at my current company do this.

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#17

Post by randomvectors »

jaabe wrote: post #8

I’ve never hired someone who was self-taught, not because self-taught people can’t be equal or better, but because you’re trying to buy security and stability. The most expensive mistake you can make as a manager is hiring the wrong person, and self-educated people just aren’t worth the risk when you have a dozen other candidates who are great. I’m Danish though and things are a little different here because educatio…

1. As a hiring manager you should be better at differentiating between people and treat a degree as just one data point that you take into account, and not as a filter that gives no false positives.

2. You're pointing out that self-educated people aren't worth the risk and then you go on to advise him that he should self-educate.

3. A point that I think you're kind of making and that I agree with, is that a degree is a signal that you've gone through a certain process of education. If you don't have it, then you'd better signal the same thing in a different manner and demonstrate that you're familiar with theory, best practices, design patterns and so on; and that you can stick with something for a continuous period of time (showing up and doing at least the minimum amount of work for 4 years isn't a signal that all candidates have).

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#18

Post by CuriouslyC »

Can't say for sure without spending some time with your code, which you would need to entice me to do. Without a resume, you need a portfolio. That could be one app, if it really catches my attention. A blog with a few short but insightful posts about programming could help too. Catching me at a meetup and demonstrating some intelligence and thoughtfulness would probably clinch it.

Your marketability is fairly limited with just vanilla JS/LAMP. At this point I'd say learn basic React, Node and Python (preferably) or Ruby. Familiarity with AWS would also be a high return investment. You don't need to know any big back-end frameworks (e.g. Django/Rails) really well, but be able to bootstrap a project and use the management app. Spending some time with a microframework is a good idea (e.g. Express/Flask/Sinatra).

At your level working remotely part time is probably not going to be an option. Offering to take a lower salary during negotiations might get you a few days remote but I wouldn't expect it. I would definitely negotiate for more remote time as a reward for positive performance reviews though.

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#19

Post by smt88 »

drenvuk wrote: post #15
smt88 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would whiteboard you > you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov As someone who also hires software people, I would urge you to review the evidence on whiteboarding. It's difficult to discard your own anecdotal evidence, but hiring has no control group -- you have no idea how many great people you're missing as a result of whiteboarding. The reasons against whiteboarding have been discussed here man…

My whiteboarding consists of a mix of three things: 1. Invert a binary tree (tree based and simplistic) 2. Open a file, parse it in a simple way and then write to a new file. (file systems, strings) 3. Design a barebones twitter/reddit, etc. (architecture) No dynamic programming, no esoteric stuff. Just can they understand tree structures, do they have a grasp on file systems, and do they have a modicum of design sen…

It doesn't matter how easy the task is. People are nervous about being in a job interview.

Also, who inverts binary trees on the job?

I've had good success with (like you) asking to be walked through some architecture. I also ask them to review a one-page program and then code-review two commits to it.

Finally, I give them a take-home (paid) assignment.

It's as close to testing how they really work as I can get without contract-to-hire (which I also support).

Re: Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

#20

Post by jaabe »

thetrost wrote: post #14
jaabe wrote: post #8

I’ve never hired someone who was self-taught, not because self-taught people can’t be equal or better, but because you’re trying to buy security and stability. The most expensive mistake you can make as a manager is hiring the wrong person, and self-educated people just aren’t worth the risk when you have a dozen other candidates who are great. I’m Danish though and things are a little different here because educatio…

Yeah, nobody gets fired for buying IBM. I don't know how the market for good developers is in Denmark, but I think restricting your potential employees to just formally trained limits your potential as team/company. edit: Plus, I know quite a lot of formally trained developers who at some point just stopped learning. To me that is much more dangerous than not having a formal education in the first place.

I’ve hired a lot of people, I do a lot of networking and I work as an examiner for CS students, I’ve never seen someone who was self-educated remotely compare to someone with a degree. It just doesn’t happen in a country where anyone who wants to put in the work can get a degree.

Which was kind of my point. The people who failed to get a degree are typically the people who won’t become great when they are self-taught either.

I can see why you would chose not to get an education in a country like America, where it would be a huge financial burden to do so, but we literally pay people to attend their free education.

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