Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm Begging for Work

brokedev.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 342 posts

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#261

Post by mcv »

Jach wrote: post #187
tomhagen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt people get filtered out solely on their profile picture. Yet when you have two similar resumes, things like this might (and probably will) decide who'll be filtered out. Pro-tip: no one wants to see a Nikon in your profile picture and no one cares about your photography hobby on your resume. I'm talking to you, half of the tech community on Linkedin!

People are filtered all the time for BS reasons, e.g. there's a fairly well-known "I only hire lucky people" filter where a random half of the application pile is tossed out without a glance.

You might be throwing out the lucky ones if your company is a bad place to work.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#262

Post by werber »

puranjay wrote: post #99
sdoering wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[rant on] Because in this filter bubble here you are not worth a dime, if you can't brag about how friggin' awesome you are - thats what twitter is for. [rant off] Imho he should apply for jobs, apply more and even apply more. Having studied literature, I have jumped ships from publishing to tourism (marketing analyst) to being a full time data analyst via doing the work and having a resume to show it. Having an appl…

Fellow literature student here. I'm very curious how you managed to shift to data analysis. I've made a successful shift to marketing, but technical work still eludes me.

I studied literature as well, and made the jump to being a developer by doing a bootcamp.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#263

Post by mcv »

mycroft-holmes wrote: post #245
jlarocco wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess beggers can't be choosers, but you're describing an employer I would never work for. > Remove any controversial political views or disparaging remarks about previous employers. If a person keeps their stupid political views to themselves while at work, it's really not any of their employers business. As far as disparaging remarks go, if it's an awesome company to work for, there shouldn't be anything to worry…

Yeah, the fact that political views are an issue for this CEO is a sign that I'd never want to work with this CEO.

Yeah, but you're not unemployed with 4 kids.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#264

Post by mcv »

etchalon wrote: post #157
Bonogongo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do what you like, but if you swear at me and call me f* I'll not hire you.

That's ridiculous. Good managers let their employees vent, when necessary, and don't take it personally. Insecure ones get all uppity about things like that.

Yeah, but there's a lot of insecure managers out there, and if you're desperate for a job, you need to take that into account.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#265

Post by cplease »

cplease wrote: post #48

Dude, you got shit on, but your entire post screams unprofessional. If you want to be a professional, and be treated like a professional, you need to act professional. Harsh perhaps but that's the truth. If this is a serious job solicitation and not just catharsis you are doing it all wrong. Starting with how desperate you are, how proud you made your mom, and how shitty you've been doing and been treated does not ma…

Wow, a lot of replies.

Just want to clarify my meaning here. The intent is really a more frank and critical version of mmaunder's advice above.

When I say he is unprofessional, I'm not talking about per se what he did at work, how he left (involuntarily), or his reaction. That was more amateurish, which isn't exactly "professional," but not unprofessional. He should have set expectations and negotiated better and harder earlier. He should have done a job search on the DL so he had something lined up before giving an ultimatum; the writing was on the wall anyway. Woulda shoulda coulda. Well, coding and negotiating skills are not correlated. Join the club. Hopefully he will learn and do better next time.

What is unprofessional is posting a pseudonymous rant to Hacker News with your email address and "begging for work."

Posting a pseudonymous "My shitty employer shafted me" story to HN would be spot on. But turning that into a job solicitation is a huge, unprofessional blunder. Yeah, he touched a nerve and got bumped up the page. Yeah, he's probably going to be inundated with offers. Charity offers for weak positions of the kind he left. Maybe he won't be screwed over hard, but he won't be treated like a professional and get the terms he could if he were working from a position of strength, competence, confidence and success. He'll get an offer consistent with desperation. Do you want to work at a company that seeks out desperate candidates as your colleagues?

The fact is, if you want $75K, you have to find someone who thinks you are worth $75K. If you don't have a degree or a distinguished resume, you've got a lot to prove even in a tight job market for engineers. The way you do that is show that you kick ass on the front end and can lay down code with the next guy, and communicate your worth and expectations with confidence.

But yeah, those of you who think a self-pitying rant about starving in a trailer and getting fired from his first glorified internship in a winning career strategy, you do what works for you.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#266

Post by cxseven »

Bonogongo wrote: post #79
vruiz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get a great looking but professional profile pic up there, get kudos from friends Really? as a CEO those are signals for you? the profile picture is debatable but the endorsements are just a joke and everyone knows it, people just exchange them like they do with twitter follows. If anything, too many of them would be a negative signal for me. Completely agree with the rest of your comment though.

Hiring is a filtering game. With 100 candidates, first thing you do is filter out 80, I wish more candidates would understand this.

Why not filter out those 80 with a dead-simple (fizzbuzz level) online quiz?

In my experience it was enormously difficult to find qualified candidates, especially if HR or recruiters were allowed to pre-filter candidates using relatively superficial judgments. A fizzbuzz test easily eliminated more than 80%.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#267

Post by mcv »

chrisbennet wrote: post #166
brokedev wrote: post #100

My email is blowing up. Sorry I haven't answered anyone, I really didn't expect much of a response and this on top of everything else is overwhelming. I really can't post my personal account names publicly, that would give away the company and, as I've said previously, I do really like the dev team. My team leader has a kid as well and works his ass off, and I want to see that pay off for him when they get through so…

Don't make excuses for the CEO. He didn't forget because he's a busy guy. He straight up exploited you. "I don't blame my boyfriend, he only beats me when I deserve it." You learn many valuable lessons on that first job. One of them is that if they pay you cheaply initially they will almost never see you as "valuable" after that. It's just human nature. Another lesson is that the best way to get a raise is to switch…

> You learn many valuable lessons on that first job. One of them is that if they pay you cheaply initially they will almost never see you as "valuable" after that.

I remember at my second job, I discovered that a co-worker who worked there longer, made less money than I did, and I considered myself underpaid. And that was actually a pretty nice company with decent founders. The co-worker started there as a student I think, and maybe he was never assertive enough in asking for raises, or maybe a bunch of 5% raises still don't amount to much if you start low enough.

Whatever the case, I learned through personal experience that the best way to get a raise is to switch jobs. For some reason, it seems you have more leverage with a prospective employer than with a current one.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#268

Post by gregcohn »

puranjay wrote: post #99
sdoering wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[rant on] Because in this filter bubble here you are not worth a dime, if you can't brag about how friggin' awesome you are - thats what twitter is for. [rant off] Imho he should apply for jobs, apply more and even apply more. Having studied literature, I have jumped ships from publishing to tourism (marketing analyst) to being a full time data analyst via doing the work and having a resume to show it. Having an appl…

Fellow literature student here. I'm very curious how you managed to shift to data analysis. I've made a successful shift to marketing, but technical work still eludes me.

literature major here, just chiming in to say it can be done! (I'm a founder/CEO now.) Follow the things that challenge you and that you can learn from, that intersect with things you have some strength in. Maybe marketing in the context of developer platforms?

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#269

Post by mcv »

Timucin wrote: post #29

What a bastard! Sorry for the language guys, but guess we all know someone like that boss! It's not that hard when you're single but the things are totally different when you had a family and kids. The situation can drag you to any point when it comes to a hungry brother, sister or children. I know, I've been there (thank god it's a history now). But the good news is, you are really valuable. I mean, you are a ruby d…

> Sorry for the language guys, but guess we all know someone like that boss!

No, I don't. I mean, I've had a seriously awful boss before, but even he wasn't this sociopath.

Re: I'm Begging for Work

#270

Post by gknoy »

FilterSweep wrote: post #257
sdoering wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well OK - whenever I tried to put twitter to some good use the ration between signal and noise just threw me off. But maybe I just wasn't able to find the right strategy.

To be fair, Twitter is filled to the brim with noise. And I'm just as jaded as you are WRT to the massive scale pandering to Twitter-mobs going on in current society. With that being said, Dev communities tend to be quite different on twitter. I'll have to take the plunge as well, so I'm speaking to myself as much as I'm speaking to you, make an account _solely_ for your developer persona .

I think my problem with Twitter is, I have no idea what I would tweet about. Do you just use it to follow things and post replies to people looking for help? I have skipped Twitter for years because I didn't feel a need to micro-blog (esp publically), but now I regret that and don't know where to start. I'm worried that maintaining my feed (?) would be a huge time sink.

I like your suggestion about my "developer persona". Do you have suggestions for tools or tactics for making sure the signal to noise stays high?

Post reply on HN