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Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

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Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#51

Post by Bahamut »

hasenj wrote: post #38
moron4hire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focused on the wrong thing. The resume comes way too late in the job acquisition process to really matter. The vast majority of jobs are filled through networking, not applying cold with a great resume. You need to work on meeting people in your field, at the companies where you want to work. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Go out to meetups. Be a friendly, helpful person. Make friends, lots of them…

I always hear this, but I've never been hired through networking, nor have I ever seen someone hired through networking. I suspect that to be more the case in very large companies. Luckily I have never worked in one.

Large companies are probably even less likely to hire due to networking - it helps more with smaller companies. I have helped gotten friends hired at companies I’ve worked at, and vice versa.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#52

Post by milofeynman »

jorgemf wrote: post #39
milofeynman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at a small, dying startup doing Xamarin mobile development and I'm looking to pivot out of xamarin/mobile and into web and data. I am learning online and doing a side project on github, but I don't have experience making this kind of transition. I've thrown on an infrequent job application not expecting much and gotten 0 responses. So I am curious what others who have made that sort of transition do to get notice…

Moving to web should be easier than data. When you do mobile development you do a little of front end and back end (I was Android developer before). Learning a high demanded framework would help in your case. Data will take more time but you can do it if you start as a data engineer developing the data pipeline. But in this case you probably should aim to bigger companies and be hired would be more difficult without…

Thanks. Yeah data is a much steeper climb. I am going the web route(I have some experience here already) and will look for a company that does data as well, that way I can learn and get started a little easier.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#53

Post by dharness »

quuquuquu wrote: post #33
tristram_shandy wrote: post #7

Don't write anything on your resume that would indicate "number of years experience" -- list your jobs, explain key achievements, don't distill anything down to a number. Your resume should NOT explain who you are, or go into real specifics -- it's an advertisement for you, as simple as that. If they want details, they'll have to schedule an interview. Once you have the interview, you can talk about your experiences,…

>"Also, don't say you're 'pivoting' yout career. Just don't." I tend to find such polemics unhelpful. Usually when someone tells me "just don't", I end up really wanting to know the mechanism behind what is causing such a stern warning. For example, if I asked someone, "should I jump out of an airplane with no parachute",... and someone says... "just don't, because unless you have lots of luck and can defy lots of la…

100% with regards to "just don't".

Independent of that, I think using the word 'pivot' here is fine. We all know what he means. There might be a different word with a different connotation that some people may be more receptive to. But, pivot is well within the realm of reasonable words to use here.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#54

Post by ChuckMcM »

When I hear this kind of comment I wonder about the mention of "junior" and "senior".

If I may suggest that the title 'junior' or 'senior' is artificial and generally unhelpful in the sort of quest you are on. If that sounds harsh I apologize, when I see development resumes I don't see "levels" I see strengths and weaknesses.

A developer that can pick up a frame work quickly and be productive in it is "strong", one who continually re-factors the problem so that they can re-use the framework they already know is "weak." A developer who can discuss the trade-offs between multiple frameworks in terms of solving the needs of performance, manageability, or resource usage is "strong", one who only knows the trade-offs and pitfalls of the framework they are most familiar with is "weak." Developers who are working on improving their understanding and craft are "strong", developers who are don't understand why their particular framework does something the way it does are "weak."

That is a lot of admittedly contrived examples but I hope they illustrate the kind of developer I look for when I'm hiring. If you have 10 years writing code I want to see a wide understanding of a lot of different systems, if you have 2 years writing code I want to see you understand the key design elements of the systems you are using, and have some idea of why those design decisions were made. It is the difference between being able to code, and code fluency.

So to answer your question, if someone wants "years of experience in a stack" then they may be using that as a filtering mechanism to get rid of people who are unsure of their abilities. I remember reading advertisements in 1998 for people with "5 years experience in Java" when Java had really only been released (early alphas in 1995). I wondered if they were just trying to hire folks who were part of the original team (which went back to 1991 :-). Talking to recruiters though, they were really looking for people who were so excited about Java that they had done an in depth dive on their own. Perhaps you are seeing something similar.

My advice to you is to lead with your strengths. If you have examples that demonstrate those strengths or projects which demonstrated them put them in too. Be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and think about ways to you can eliminate them. Be the strongest developer you can be and always work one ways to develop additional strengths. The rest has, in my experience, taken care of itself.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#55

Post by kelnos »

hasenj wrote: post #38
moron4hire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focused on the wrong thing. The resume comes way too late in the job acquisition process to really matter. The vast majority of jobs are filled through networking, not applying cold with a great resume. You need to work on meeting people in your field, at the companies where you want to work. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Go out to meetups. Be a friendly, helpful person. Make friends, lots of them…

I always hear this, but I've never been hired through networking, nor have I ever seen someone hired through networking. I suspect that to be more the case in very large companies. Luckily I have never worked in one.

I've never not been hired through networking, and I've never worked for a large company. YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#56

Post by kelnos »

christophilus wrote: post #29

The number of years thing is bogus. Just ignore it and apply. I remember seeing posts asking for more Rails experience than DHH himself has. Something like 8 years of Rails experience when Rails was only 6 years old. Those requirements are almost always written by some of the least competent people in the company.

Yup, agreed. On my resume I have a list of my jobs and the things I accomplished at those companies, and I don't mention tech stack or language unless it's relevant to the accomplishment. At the bottom I have a "keyword list" of the frameworks and languages I've used and feel competent in, without saying anything about years of experience. (I've found this is useful to get through the recruiters who filter by keyword.)

Just apply to jobs, and talk about what you've done, and how you did it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#57

Post by kelnos »

scarface74 wrote: post #23
Vendan wrote: post #2

I treat the "we want people who know stack X" kind of thing as a "Here's what stack we are using" and nothing more. I don't lie and say that I know the stack, but I don't want to work for a company that doesn't understand that a good programmer can switch to a new stack in a very short time frame. On the other hand, you need the ability to pick up a new stack easily.

I hire contractors. I don't have time for people to ramp up on the job. I need them to come in knowing the stack we are working in. If I were hiring full time devs, I would take a chance but I would expect them to meet deadlines as if they were fluent in the stack - meaning if they have to work weekends or more than 40 hours a week to be just as efficient as someone who knows the stack, they should do it. I put mysel…

For contract work I can understand that mindset, but for FTEs that's incredibly short-sighted. I absolutely object to expecting someone new to a stack to spend crazy hours until they're up to speed. I see framework onboarding as equivalent to any other part of the onboarding process where a new employee figures out their new team's source code repo layout, build tooling, deployment process, etc.

Hell, even if you're using a framework that I'm intimately familiar with, most frameworks are flexible enough that it'll take a little while to get used to exactly how you're using it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#58

Post by danesparza »

infinii wrote: post #43
quuquuquu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Also, don't say you're 'pivoting' yout career. Just don't." I tend to find such polemics unhelpful. Usually when someone tells me "just don't", I end up really wanting to know the mechanism behind what is causing such a stern warning. For example, if I asked someone, "should I jump out of an airplane with no parachute",... and someone says... "just don't, because unless you have lots of luck and can defy lots of la…

Startups "pivot" because they failed in some way. Pivoting your career can be construed as having failed somewhere and needing to find something else. In the context of a career, phrase it as evolving your skills to match market demand. The very people who "pivot" resonate with will immediately associate it with failure.

^^^ This ^^^

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#59

Post by chronic62a »

dharness wrote: post #53
quuquuquu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Also, don't say you're 'pivoting' yout career. Just don't." I tend to find such polemics unhelpful. Usually when someone tells me "just don't", I end up really wanting to know the mechanism behind what is causing such a stern warning. For example, if I asked someone, "should I jump out of an airplane with no parachute",... and someone says... "just don't, because unless you have lots of luck and can defy lots of la…

100% with regards to "just don't". Independent of that, I think using the word 'pivot' here is fine. We all know what he means. There might be a different word with a different connotation that some people may be more receptive to. But, pivot is well within the realm of reasonable words to use here.

> We all know what he means.

It means he failed.

I don't want failures on my team. There are hundreds of other candidates who didn't use the word pivot I'll gladly interview.

Re: Ask HN: How do you pivot your career when jobs want years of exp in a stack

#60

Post by TheTrueTDF »

infinii wrote: post #43
quuquuquu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Also, don't say you're 'pivoting' yout career. Just don't." I tend to find such polemics unhelpful. Usually when someone tells me "just don't", I end up really wanting to know the mechanism behind what is causing such a stern warning. For example, if I asked someone, "should I jump out of an airplane with no parachute",... and someone says... "just don't, because unless you have lots of luck and can defy lots of la…

Startups "pivot" because they failed in some way. Pivoting your career can be construed as having failed somewhere and needing to find something else. In the context of a career, phrase it as evolving your skills to match market demand. The very people who "pivot" resonate with will immediately associate it with failure.

They are pivoting because they don't want to fail. They maybe made a mistake or the market changed, acknowledged it and took action based on this information.

For me this is not something negative at all

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