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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 149 posts

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

#71

Post by aptwebapps »

caseysoftware wrote: post #64
infinii wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pivoting sin't because they've failed. It's because the path to their goal has changed or isn't what they previously thought. Basically, they're adjusting to new information (market, industry, etc) just like the rest of your definition. Yes, it's an overused term but it's NOT a sign of failure.

I think this is bordering on a no true Scottsman argument, although maybe unintentionally. But whether that's true or not, I think lots of people take it as a euphemism for failure.

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

#72

Post by eugenoprea »

I am going to write this from the perspective of a potential employer.

Personally, I don't look at the years of experience someone has, but at the projects that the person worked on and how good that person is at answering some technical questions (to weed out people that lie about their experience and knowledge).

If you are good at what you do, then have some projects to show your expertise. And there are a few options to get them:

1. help a non-profit for a lower pay or even for free 2. contribute to open source projects 3. create a project of your own where you can show what you can do

> What did you do to get a response back from jobs you've submitted an application to?

When applying don't talk about years of experience, but about what projects you completed and how you managed to get them done.

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

#73

Post by crucialfelix »

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.

It's important to remember that the people writing the ads aren't usually experts.

They are mostly worried they will get a bad hire, so they are looking at ways to eliminate potential negatives. They are in a risk reduction mentality. So it is safer to just eliminate candidates.

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

#74

Post by rdiddly »

groby_b wrote: post #63
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 still doubt the "networking" part. I've got my first job in the states because a recruiter called me. Same for the second job. The third one was through being acquired. The fourth one, you could call networking if you call showing up for a recruiting event networking. 5th one? You guessed it, recruiter called. Sixth one? Yep. Exactly. Before that, I worked in Germany. 1st job, applied cold. Second one, applied cold…

That's one of the benefits of recruiters in my book - they get paid to do the networking.

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

#75

Post by bdcravens »

groby_b wrote: post #63
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 still doubt the "networking" part. I've got my first job in the states because a recruiter called me. Same for the second job. The third one was through being acquired. The fourth one, you could call networking if you call showing up for a recruiting event networking. 5th one? You guessed it, recruiter called. Sixth one? Yep. Exactly. Before that, I worked in Germany. 1st job, applied cold. Second one, applied cold…

Most of my opportunities have come from networking, including the longest, most prosperous role.

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

#76

Post by bdcravens »

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.

Depends on what you call networking. Being involved (speaking), mentoring, reaching out to people in your social circle who have contacts in professional circles you're interested in, etc. Networking isn't showing up to a something posted on Meetup.com, grabbing a slice of pizza and a drink, and making small talk.

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

#77

Post by khitchdee »

Take a pay cut and start on their stack at a junior position. With your experience, you should quickly be able to ramp back up to your own grade/pay level on that stack. Be upfront about your plans. There are companies where your manager can retroactively increase your grade/pay level based on a performance review. This way you are betting on your own abilities while reducing risk for the hiring manager.

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

#78

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

I would just demonstrate that you can pick up a new stack easily by putting up some code on Github that uses the stack. It's not a perfect solution, but we have hired people before with no work experience in the stack we were using, but with Github code to prove they were comfortable with the tools.

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

#79

Post by zn44 »

If possible you can try to find company that uses both stack you have experience with and stack you want to learn. Apply for position with stack you know and let them know you want to help and learn in different areas. That worked for me when moving from mobile to backend.

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

#80

Post by insomniacity »

acangiano wrote: post #10

Four suggestions: 1. Don't obsess over the specifics on an ad. See if the role is in line with what you have to offer, but don't worry if you don't have the exact number of years of experience they request or one of the many skills they added to what it's essentially their wishlist. 2. Provided you have a solid foundation with some standard skills like JavaScript, Python or Ruby, etc, specialize in a relatively new s…

Re #4: I was rejected for a job. The interview process included take-home work AND pair-programming.

One of the specific pieces of feedback I got was that my development style wasn't modern enough - with a recommendation that if 'your current employer isn't exposing you to best practices and new approaches you should attend some relevant meetups in [city]'.

My personal negative take on that was that meetups tend to concentrate on the latest fad. The interviewer could have gone to one meetup in a series and seen one talk/library/strategy that resonnated with him. I could have gone to the next one in the series, picked up something completely different, and still failed the interview?

Thoughts?

Post reply on HN