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My dad's resume and skills from 1980

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Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#601

Post by jcadam »

nsxwolf wrote: post #365
dspillett wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet they test every applicant on it anyway. If you have enough applicants, why not filter out so you have the best of them? (well, maybe not quite the best, there is some value in having someone less likely to get bored and move on PDQ).

I've never seen any evidence these interviews accomplish finding the best or even a competent candidate. In my opinion the best interview process involves simply looking at the work history and having a conversation about it. If it sounds pretty good, you go with your gut and hire. A bunch of different people paid this person a lot of money for 5, 10, 20 years and you really think there's a chance they were all foole…

Yep. Can they talk at length and in reasonable detail about previous projects they've worked on? You can usually figure out if they were actively engaged and involved in the work vs ...just kinda there.

Also, do they try to BS you when you ask them something they don't know...

The "traditional" coding interview is really only appropriate for a college student/new grad with no work history to lean on. Even then, there's probably a better way...

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#602

Post by jimmaswell »

antonknee wrote: post #589
jimmaswell wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a good use case for AI. Write your resume then let AI rewrite it to be aesthetically pleasing to resume readers. People like my interior decorating, I can appreciate other things that are aesthetically pleasing, and I've made my share of actual art. I just don't think I have it in me to understand whatever in the world is going through someone's mind when they're displeased with this resume. It's a miss…

I agree a standardised database would be ideal. I think it’s telling that you have received very valid and constructive criticism on this resume from multiple people, yet you still can’t see why this is a bad resume. You know from data and observation that in the real world this is in fact a bad resume, because it doesn’t get you interviews and offers - which is the point of a resume.

It's a case where the world is wrong, I'm right, and we'd all be better off if people thought like me on this issue instead, as far as I'm concerned.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#603

Post by jimmaswell »

blandflakes wrote: post #587
jimmaswell wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It definitely doesn't give me anything to ask about. Quotes like "Save a lot of time by automating an email process" are so vague ... are you kidding with these two sentences side by side? you just answered your own question, ask about the email process! and how is that outline of what I did even that vague? and everyone says to list accomplishments that benefitted the company instead of responsibilities, which thi…

Don't beg the question in your resume. I don't want coy points to ask about, I want details so I can make sure that I can actually have an engaging conversation about something, especially so that I can figure out how it might relate to work I'm doing here. It's astonishing to me that you can't grasp that a resume is a form of communication, and that therefore you might want to, I dunno, communicate in it. > and ever…

"Saved over 30 hours of manual work, where the worker had to find a PDF, Excel sheet row contents, and information from one other data source, combine them into a formatted email with this information following certain conditions, and look up the right email to send it to. This was done with Python and the gmail api, , and manual string parsing, building hashmaps of the information and sending the emails out once every 10 seconds to honor the rate limiting. Parsing failures or any other exception was logged for manual review."

All that extra detail seems trivial to me and covered well enough by the gist provided. Is this version really that much better for these details? Is it even enough detail for you yet? It feels like too much detail to me.

It was something about tax ID's and temporary merchant licenses for the state of Maryland.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#604

Post by blandflakes »

jimmaswell wrote: post #603
blandflakes wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't beg the question in your resume. I don't want coy points to ask about, I want details so I can make sure that I can actually have an engaging conversation about something, especially so that I can figure out how it might relate to work I'm doing here. It's astonishing to me that you can't grasp that a resume is a form of communication, and that therefore you might want to, I dunno, communicate in it. > and ever…

"Saved over 30 hours of manual work, where the worker had to find a PDF, Excel sheet row contents, and information from one other data source, combine them into a formatted email with this information following certain conditions, and look up the right email to send it to. This was done with Python and the gmail api, , and manual string parsing, building hashmaps of the information and sending the emails out once eve…

I think you're just being intellectually dishonest if you can't imagine some compromise between what you started with and what you have here, given the feedback you've received.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#605

Post by lifehasleft »

cowanon22dhhf wrote: post #273
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I didn't thought this thing about computers would go too far." I almost didn't major in Computer Science because in the late 90s, there were so many negative articles in the New York Times, vis-a-vis software. People don't remember it now, but the media and the culture were utterly hostile towards us, and loved to say our jobs were going to India, that everything there was to know about Computer Science could be s…

> I almost didn't major in Computer Science because in the late 90s, there were so many negative articles in the New York Times, vis-a-vis software. People don't remember it now, but the media and the culture were utterly hostile towards us, and loved to say our jobs were going to India, that everything there was to know about Computer Science could be studied in railyard switching, in existing abstract math textbook…

My mother talked me out of going to school for programming, and a decade after I graduated high school that’s what I ended up doing anyway, realizing it was going to lead to better prospects.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#606

Post by jimmaswell »

blandflakes wrote: post #604
jimmaswell wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Saved over 30 hours of manual work, where the worker had to find a PDF, Excel sheet row contents, and information from one other data source, combine them into a formatted email with this information following certain conditions, and look up the right email to send it to. This was done with Python and the gmail api, , and manual string parsing, building hashmaps of the information and sending the emails out once eve…

I think you're just being intellectually dishonest if you can't imagine some compromise between what you started with and what you have here, given the feedback you've received.

No, I was honestly half expecting you to come back and say it still wasn't enough detail.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#607

Post by blandflakes »

jimmaswell wrote: post #606
blandflakes wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're just being intellectually dishonest if you can't imagine some compromise between what you started with and what you have here, given the feedback you've received.

No, I was honestly half expecting you to come back and say it still wasn't enough detail.

That's the actual definition of bad faith discussion. True to form, then :)

Edit: An actual dramatic improvement is trivial to pull from your bait example, by the way:

"Automated a manual process for collating tax ID and temporary merchant licenses for the state of Maryland, honoring rate limiting and supporting auditing of failures. Used Python and Gmail API".

Obviously there is some precision loss in my writing because I didn't work on the project and because your description of "something about tax ID's" was ambiguous to begin with.

Could even add "saving 30 hours a week/day/whatever".

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#608

Post by j33zusjuice »

robertlagrant wrote: post #47
j33zusjuice wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience looking at résumés (mostly for entry-level tech roles), fancy formatting is 100% an attempt to cover for a lack of skill. I haven’t seen one that had good content. Intuitively, this makes sense to me, and seems to fit with the old adage, “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” Imo, your experience should speak for itself.

I would do your best to fully ignore anything like this. It's bound to be incorrect sometimes.

Oh, for sure, I read all of them top to bottom when I’m part of the hiring team. I just haven’t actually seen one that was fancy that had good content. The layout doesn’t matter to me, as long as it’s consistently formatted.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#609

Post by still_grokking »

dusted wrote: post #559
still_grokking wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not even given the historic context this makes any sense. We're not talking about embedded software with special constrains here! This story is about mundane enterprise software . Nothing in the story justified this insane level of over-engineering and premature optimization . Just using the "optimizing compiler" was deemed "good enough" for all other needs of the company, likely… Also nobody asked for that over-…

I'm pretty sure a card dealing game is rarely considered mundane enterprise software..

Wasn't it a marketing gimmick? At least that's my understanding.

Otherwise it makes no sens. Computers back than where very expensive. You wouldn't use them for anything that wouldn't yield income in some way.

It quite clearly wasn't a "computer game" in today's meaning.

I would call "marketing support software" indeed "mundane enterprise software".

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#610

Post by aj7 »

apurtbapurt wrote: post #388
aj7 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned Fortran 4 in high school in 1967-1968. That’s how good the NYC exam schools were — Stuyvesant in this case. We had our own 1130. This came in handy in college, I did the programming in a physics group, immediately. But it seemed too tedious to do as a career. I still feel that way.

So what you gonna do when you grow up? :-)

F* around in the machine shop.
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