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The greatest resume I've ever seen

cloudirregular.substack.com

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Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#51

Post by stuff4ben »

sdoering wrote: post #31
stuff4ben wrote: post #14

So... smart and gets things done. Honestly that's all I look for on a resume. You also have to talk about it in an interview. I couldn't care less if you can invert a binary tree. One of the greatest developers I've ever worked with, I hired straight out of college. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree but his senior year he took a course in Java and liked it and decided to be a programmer. Couldn't tel…

I just came of a call with a a potential hire. I recommended her to a second round because of three things: * She would culturally fit while still bringing something new to the tam * She doesn't know Web Analytics, but has done market research, built html prototypes and has basic knowledge in JS, python, html, SPSS and some other things * She is self motivated and shows this because she actually learned all these ski…

The self-motivation aspect you mentioned is also critical. It's these soft questions that reveal so much about a person's character that speak to me as much as or sometimes greater than certifications or degrees do.

It's also why resume screening done by HR drones or worse, AI, are so problematic. Unless I need someone to do an exact thing extremely fast, I'd much prefer a generalist with a sharp mind, proven "gets shit done" attitude and experience, and is motivated to do the right thing.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#52

Post by HPsquared »

josefresco wrote: post #32
jb1991 wrote: post #4

It’s come full circle. I’ve often heard people (working developers) say over the years that software engineers are basically just digital plumbers. And the job often feels that way. Now we have proof that the skills do in fact overlap quite a bit with plumbing.

My old boss (web development) said in 2003ish that "we're just plumbers" and at the time (I was young) it offended me as I thought as "technologists" we were "special". When I went out on my own, I realized he was right.

Plumbers are technologists as well, really. Just a different kind of technology...

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#53

Post by mcntsh »

moron4hire wrote: post #43
monster_group wrote: post #7

Interviewer - "That's impressive Daniel. Now can you invert a binary tree on the whiteboard?"

Jesus christ. Inverting a binary tree is not hard. That people keep using this as a joke is more a testament to the stubbornness of people believing they shouldn't have to do no learnin' no more than it is bad interviewing practices.

> shouldn't have to do no learnin'

Expecting engineers to develop skills they don't learn/use in their actual professions to prove they're capable of working a job makes no sense. If these leetcode puzzles were actually relevant, why do so many engineers have to spend time outside of work "grinding" in order to get better at them?

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#54

Post by vaughandroid »

darkteflon wrote: post #35
vishnugupta wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> digital plumbers. I had this realization over last one year, after 17 years of professional life. Most of my work these days involves plumbing together right libraries and data pipelines to automate business processes. Sometimes I need to fix an existing plumbing to plug a leak here and there. Now my Twitter handle says Plumber

I’ve always liked Joel Spolsky’s “duct-tape programmer”.

IIRC the meaning of that was specifically someone that was willing to bodge things in order to ship - someone that prioritised getting it done over getting it "done right" (whatever that means). I think it's a little different from the "plumber" label.

FWIW I like both terms. I just wouldn't use them interchangeably. :)

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#55

Post by wbsss4412 »

strgcmc wrote: post #50
stuff4ben wrote: post #14

So... smart and gets things done. Honestly that's all I look for on a resume. You also have to talk about it in an interview. I couldn't care less if you can invert a binary tree. One of the greatest developers I've ever worked with, I hired straight out of college. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree but his senior year he took a course in Java and liked it and decided to be a programmer. Couldn't tel…

The trouble is, this "je ne sais quoi" that you speak of, that you "could tell he had the chops to figure things out", is unquantifiable and almost totally subjective. To be a bit blunt and cynical, this way of evaluating candidates basically boils down to, "do I like this candidate?" Your criteria for liking someone happens to be that you look for these nebulous "chops for figuring things out". What about the other…

There is something to be said about the value of human intuition, though. While it may be fallible, part of what makes hiring a hard problem is that many of the things that distinguish good candidates just aren’t objectively measurable.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#56

Post by sly010 »

Inspiring story if you don't already work "in cloud" but as someone with a decade of experience, it somehow has an opposite effect on me. This story highlights how un-glamorous our job can be: tracking down (memory) leaks, fixing (bit) rotten hardware and obsessing over (code) smells, etc. It makes me want to quit.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#57

Post by Rd6n6 »

strgcmc wrote: post #50
stuff4ben wrote: post #14

So... smart and gets things done. Honestly that's all I look for on a resume. You also have to talk about it in an interview. I couldn't care less if you can invert a binary tree. One of the greatest developers I've ever worked with, I hired straight out of college. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree but his senior year he took a course in Java and liked it and decided to be a programmer. Couldn't tel…

The trouble is, this "je ne sais quoi" that you speak of, that you "could tell he had the chops to figure things out", is unquantifiable and almost totally subjective. To be a bit blunt and cynical, this way of evaluating candidates basically boils down to, "do I like this candidate?" Your criteria for liking someone happens to be that you look for these nebulous "chops for figuring things out". What about the other…

> unquantifiable and almost totally subjective

That’s what intuition and judgment calls are for.

What does your intuition say is a good way to approach hiring? Does it maybe tell you to figure out relevant skills and ask the candidate about those? Yet if you ignore that voice, you end up timing how long it takes them to invert binary trees from memory instead

Everybody on earth who is good at what they do relies utterly on their carefully trained intuition

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#58

Post by snarf21 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #45
monster_group wrote: post #7

Interviewer - "That's impressive Daniel. Now can you invert a binary tree on the whiteboard?"

The amount of time people spend complaining about solving trivial problems would be better spent studying for those problems in the first place. If you literally know what questions are being asked in a test, you should probably fucking just learn it an move on.

I think the issue is that the interviewee doesn't always know what is on the "test". It is also a waste of everyone's time. If a company's only data store is SQL of some kind, which do you want: Someone who can barely do joins but has memorized red/black tree function implementations in several languages or some one who knows SQL at a production level and if they had to do something with red/black trees would just have to spend a day or two re-reading how they work? I think the thing this underscores is that we really need an association like the "bar". So you can go study all the things on the test and prove you have the knowledge and ability and then skip that as part of hiring and just focus on experience. The only thing we have today is tech company specific certification which is okay for certain things but not for more general software needs.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#59

Post by askonomm »

riekus wrote: post #19
wpietri wrote: post #12

This is great. Occasionally I wonder what I'd be doing if I weren't a software developer. I suspect I'd be a mediocre car mechanic. I'd be great at the weird and interesting problems, but bored to tears by the standard, unchallenging work. And crabby about it, of course.

That was exactly me as a car mechanic, finding the problem that no one couldn't find? Awesome, but even doing the work to fix it after diagnosed it was boring for me, not to mention the thousands of tire changes, oil changes... So boring. Sold everything and travelled for 4 years where I worked on projects of my own (programming) and being self taught I planned to be a programmer when I came back (now) but thinking a…

I recommend joining a smaller company or start-up, that way you have plenty of interesting things to work on, and won't be bogged down to being a "code monkey", as you can influence architectural decisions, and so on. It's the bigger companies with a very routine "process" that usually makes you feel like a line worker.

Re: The greatest resume I've ever seen

#60

Post by JasonFruit »

madflame991 wrote: post #36
JshWright wrote: post #28

"Until I met Daniel, I actually didn't know that "smoke testing" was a term with a literal smoke-related meaning. I'd always heard it used in the context of software tests. Daniel used a tracing technique to follow a problem to its source, instead of just making random guesses." I've always known "smoke testing" to refer to the mythical magic smoke that makes all electronics work. Smoke testing is turning something o…

Tangential-ish: I used to live in a place where we had gas resources and gas stoves. Gas pipes would be painted yellow to stand out and people always had some sort of respect and caution around them - you don't mess with gas pipes - I learned that as a kid. At the slightest whif of gas people would light up a match or a lighter and run it along the pipe to check for leaks - I always thought this is what "smoke testin…

Use soapy water instead and watch for bubbles. Less exciting but much safer.
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