Live data from Hacker News

I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

codeamigo.dev

61–70 of 258 posts

Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

#61
post #20
post #4

Why don't they just call it Code Academy. why does it have to be some weird little made up word that doesn't even make any sense

Amigo means friend in Spanish. No more of a made up word than academy.

cademy is not a word though. code cademy.

Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

#64

>My favorite part of the photographic process was watching prints come to life. I loved starting with a blank sheet of paper and applying various photographic methods to bring the image to life. >I found that building websites was similarly satisfying. For example, click the "Reveal Image" button to watch an image fade in to the blank canvas! I think a lot about why I went into computer science and this is the same c…

I feel like for a lot of us, at its most basic level, software development is truly creative. It's not the activity that people traditionally associate with the term "creative outlet" but for me at least it's akin to combining human emotional experience and music theory to compose a song or a flavor inspiration and the 12 tastes in food to create a dish. Even further as I've moved into a Machine Learning Engineer role the creative aspect needn't even be sensual, like visual or auditory, it could be totally abstract: I find the concept of some of the tensorflow graphs I have created to be beautiful even though they are way too complex to visualize (suck it tensorboard).

Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

#65
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible loss, on the other hand "this guy wants to build his own site / make the decisions" might not be a great hire if you're trying to hire a worker drone to build a given widget. Lots of different situations could apply.

The only possible situation here is "A-types hire A-types; B-types hire C-types". If a single applicant can replace your entire engineering team (which definitely happened in this case) why wouldn't you hire them to build a widget?

>If a single applicant can replace your entire engineering team (which definitely happened in this case) why wouldn't you hire them to build a widget?

Because possibly that's not what they want to do, build a widget.

Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

#66
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wondered about that when I've seen it described as 'US timezones' or similar, which on the face of it seems to just mean the Americas (modulo I have no idea if maybe Canada or somewhere South has an extra one not used in the USA) - but maybe it suggests they're pretty open to anyone anywhere who convincingly says they'll work Pacific (or whatever) hours. Good to hear it's worked out for you.

Leading a team spanning more than 8 timezones is hard - but what it usually means is they don't know how to manage (read: trust) and have no leadership experience with remote teams. The factory/assembly line of managing teams is still common - they don't really understand how to asynchronously build software itself. Many employers in the US are particularly keen on NOT hiring in the EU because of the significant diff…

I've never been on a team where having people spread the globe worked well. In fact, just this morning I got off a 7 am (PDT) call with people at 7:30 pm (IST), and as always I was thinking "this sucks for all of us". I don't believe there's a clever hack that can optimize around the circumference of the planet.

Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

#67
post #47

Good on you man! You: 1. Dodged a bullet (booo on any company that would reject someone with this level of passion). 2. Created your own product (which you seem even more passionate about) 3. Did all the heavy lifting to make it interesting out of the gate (provided content). Wishing you all the success!

> 1. Dodged a bullet (booo on any company that would reject someone with this level of passion). Considering what he writes on https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog/why-codeamigo , I would assume that he has a somewhat different vision on the product than Codeacademy.

Agreed - passion is great when aligned with the business direction, but can be downright toxic when in conflict.

Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own

#70

Way to be! It's silly how often employers overlook the "I just really want to be part of/build this" factor. People with that make for excellent teammates.

It's complicated. At my last startup (web application) I was in charge of hiring for the technical team. I've got an application from a guy who really really wanted to work there. But the truth is that he didn't have basic coding skills (in that, he couldn't do FizzBuzz level of coding). I really tried to get him in but in reality we would not have been able to put him in any position.

I was sad because he sent the best "cover letters" I have read ever. And I almost never care about cover letters.

Post reply on HN