51–60 of 272 posts
Should "mid-career" software developers still be focused on low-balling themselves with having to do "career growth" things like this fellow, or should they plan their exit strategy to get out of that career trajectory entirely? Assuming mid-career is actually mid-career and not the ageist SV type of mid-career.
Is it true you still need an "open source coding resume" by mid-career stage? I can understand using that to give you an advantage for entry-level roles, but by "mid-career" shouldn't your experience and achievements in past roles speak for itself? Or do companies still want to see engineers spending their spare time doing unpaid coding? By mid-career, many people have families to support, that they also would like t…
You definitely don't need an "open source coding resume" at mid-career since you don't need it in an early career job hunt. You just need to LeetCode sigh
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to carefully tailor applications to jobs I'm suited for, get references through people, etc. Unfortunately, when I've tried this, I've been completely ignored or one-liner email rejected if I'm lucky, and it's a lot of effort - so my only option is huge volume, which means I can't carefully craft anything.
If I may offer a suggestion, what works for me is that at the start of a job search, I first make a very large resume, with several excess bullet points and detailed lists of technologies. I am the only one that sees this version of my resume. Then, for every job I apply for, I cut out all of the uninteresting bullet points and reduce irrelevant terms for that job description until my resume is about a page long. For…
What if you dont have any JS experience, but have say several years working on .NET and Java. Removing that experience makes it looks like you're an entry level candidate, when in reality theres actually a decent amount of transferable skill between the tech in question and if you have enough informal experience with Node (through personal projects, etc.) you should have little issue switching.
Is it true you still need an "open source coding resume" by mid-career stage? I can understand using that to give you an advantage for entry-level roles, but by "mid-career" shouldn't your experience and achievements in past roles speak for itself? Or do companies still want to see engineers spending their spare time doing unpaid coding? By mid-career, many people have families to support, that they also would like t…
> By mid-career, many people have families to support, that they also would like to spend time with in their down time. I have never hired anyone, but anecdotally from a team lead dev who has hired a couple dozen people, that is the exact kind of thing they want to avoid. If someone was a "star" working 90 hours a week in the past but now wants to work 40, they stop being the kind of "star" some companies want.
How on earth do people have these experiences? I have to submit multiple hundreds of applications to get one interview. Throwaway because it could turn into multiple thousands if that fact is linked to my identity.
For me, every job after my first one (15 years ago) has been via reaching out to the people I have worked with before. Do you have people you have worked with who are at new places?
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I've never get good recruiters. It's always some underpaid external recruiter trying to pass anyone off for some low paying, and probably mibd-killing position. The kind the heavily editorilzaze you resume unsolicited so that it matches the position description exactly and the description they send you have glaring typos and theres a small percentage its even relevant to your experience. Everytime I've tried to follo…
Agreed. This is part of the reason why I refuse to work with third party recruiters any longer. A few more are: a) They cold call you in a way which makes it obvious they don't respect your schedule. b) They just want to shoe horn you into a role, get the commission and keep moving. c) Some third party recruiters get offended when I tell them that I am also trying to get interviews on my own without them or through o…
Is it true you still need an "open source coding resume" by mid-career stage? I can understand using that to give you an advantage for entry-level roles, but by "mid-career" shouldn't your experience and achievements in past roles speak for itself? Or do companies still want to see engineers spending their spare time doing unpaid coding? By mid-career, many people have families to support, that they also would like t…
Likewise, if your resume experience is a "no", they're not going to visit GitHub to change their minds.
Where it starts to matter is if your resume is a "maybe" on first read. If they're not quite sure if your experience is what they're looking for, they might make an effort to probe around your GitHub profile for extra information. Having even a few good commits easily accessible on GitHub can be enough to tip the scales to "yes" and move candidates on to the next stage in the interview.
> I don't think I would want to work somewhere that expects a married with kids mid-level engineer to spend their weekends and nights contributing to open source, just to land their next job.
It's a mistake to think that's it's mandatory. I've never met a real-world hiring manager who thinks that GitHub profiles are a requirement for good candidates.
Likewise, it's a mistake when people delay their job search or applications to build up a portfolio of side projects first. Realistically, most companies are never going to check your GitHub profile in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You definitely don't need an "open source coding resume" at mid-career since you don't need it in an early career job hunt. You just need to LeetCode sigh
Pretty much. In mid-career you will probably need system design as well for the >L4 roles
How on earth do people have these experiences? I have to submit multiple hundreds of applications to get one interview. Throwaway because it could turn into multiple thousands if that fact is linked to my identity.
- college OCR postings
- a recruiting firm run by people i personally know (specializing in smaller startups)
- companies that ex-co-workers work at
- FAANG recruiters that reached out via LinkedIn
- personalized emails from in-house recruiters or hiring managers
So, in all these cases, I'm already connected with someone who is incentivized to get me hired, and I start off with a recruiter screen or initial technical screen, depending on the company. And then from there, it's up to your own skills at interviewing (which are slightly correlated with your skills as an engineer).
If I was just randomly dropping resumes everywhere, no way I would ever even make it to that first screening call. You need to be paired with someone who's going to handhold your resume through the whole process until you are either hired or bomb your interview.
I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is. I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being…
It sounds like something about how you come off in interviews throws off red flags to the person interviewing you. Maybe you're too arrogant, not arrogant enough, not driven enough, etc. Most top tier companies will give you a list of personality qualities they are looking for that they expect you to show in the initial interview. I'd recommend doing a mock interview with someone you trust who has hired people to see…
For all the criticism hacker news gives whiteboard algorithm interviews, those at least are testing performance under pressure for a skill related to the job. Arrogance is a bigger problem in interviews. What comes off as confidence in an interview might come off as asshole at work.