291–300 of 875 posts
As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…
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Spoofing your number does seem shady. However, saying someone is a creep is not very helpful. There is a big difference between how one is perceived and what a person -is-. The most helpful advice I've seen here is: get direct feedback from a candid friend. This HN feedback offers a range of opinions, but -please- don't dwell on it. Find a way to have people you know help you ... practice interviews, talking out loud…
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I wish that I'd said "this behavior sounds creepy / learn to avoid creepy behavior."
I would describe op's behavior as "desperate" more than creepy. Desperation is really easy to spot and unappealing, my guess is that is shows through in interviews.
You don't want to climb the ladder. What made you think you had a shot at all of those companies? One had a thing going at IBM/EA, you are much more hireable having a current job. Unless you got an idea for the equivalent of a flamin hot cheetos, my advice is go climb it.
Brutally candid advice? You sound like a creep. Am I reading it right here, you spoofed your number to talk to executives? In the best case, they'll assume you're a pen-tester; but more likely, you're blacklisted from those companies now. I wish there was, like, short and simple advice that I could give you to not be a creep. I just tried to google that, and I'm not finding a good clear resource. Like most social ski…
Spoofing your number does seem shady. However, saying someone is a creep is not very helpful. There is a big difference between how one is perceived and what a person -is-. The most helpful advice I've seen here is: get direct feedback from a candid friend. This HN feedback offers a range of opinions, but -please- don't dwell on it. Find a way to have people you know help you ... practice interviews, talking out loud…
The QA on Apex, that's just churn and burn contract work to play a game and fill in some surveys and do this/do that...
IBM? Sounds like you were a contractor... i would have stuck that out - IBM often graduates contractors to FTE's and IBM will often pay for your school too.
If there are no managed services providers or no rackspace type companies around, find a contracting agency that does IT work - and do the same, show you can read a manual, do a job and start growing, building a rapport and getting some work under your belt.
But whatever you do, don't be a hacker, be an employee. They pay you to do what you were hired to do.
As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…
This kind of safe advice isn't very helpful for someone who is hustling IMO. Maybe it is useful for someone who's going to become a principal engineer at a large corporate. The parent commenter would be well suited to work at a startup. Unfortunately, startups have also been infected by the corporate virus. In a country that's stagnating, such risk averse behavior makes sense, because there is no reward for taking on…
The master said "You're too young, you need to start with more modest projects."
"But master" said the boy "you first composed a symphony when you were half my age!"
"Yes, but I didn't ask anyone how."
---
What I mean by this is that "hustling" is something of a unique, rare, or hacking like thing. You can't ask people how to do it, because if they could tell you then everyone would do it and it wouldn't work. I don't mean that like people are keeping a secret, but more like hustling means going through a dynamic and unexpected route and it's not something people can easily reduce to instructions.
Get a legal job that pays you at least minimum wage. That should be your #1 priority. Absolutely anything. Just apply to everything until you get something. Once you have income that you control, then start applying for computer industry jobs. Avoid homelessness at all costs, that’s a really big hole to get out of.
Doing a job that doesn't satisfy your pride or goals or expectations is much, much better than homelessness.
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> Your writing is not strong, I don't know. I think he has pretty decent writing. Kinda reminds me of William Gibson. It may be stylistically unusual, but it's definitely better than the median SWE. At least in terms of clearly conveying his thoughts.
I don't have much experience but that begs me the question, how bad were the SWEs you were working with that had even poorer communication tone than this person.
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> you call him a creep, I would call him a go getter. I've not had terribly good luck with people who use the term 'go getter.' Quite a few of them have been creeps. Smooth and slick, definitely, but at the end of the day, manipulative people who I avoid making eye contact with at public events, hoping that they don't remember me. Creeps.
I get the impression it is common for technically oriented people to think of salespeople, marketers, and recruiters as manipulative. In your view, what are some ways you think about the difference between persuasion and manipulation? I've been reading about this very topic in the context of media persuasion.
Actual persuasion is when you get them to want to do it. But a lot of forms of manipulation are disguised as persuasion - guilt, gaslighting, partial truth. A lot of "hustling" is manipulation too, they want to convince the higher up that they are willing to do anything for the job, despite not being the most qualified for it.
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Alas, this is not an acceptable cover or excuse for this behavior.
It wouldn't be good as a cover letter, but as far as social media forum posts, its totally fine.
It's hard to judge their writing without seeing their resume and/or cover letter