I'd take the opposite approach: be glad when applicants send such poor cover letters because it immediately lets you know you should NOT waste your time on them. Some one who would send such a bad boilerplate cover letter is lazy for not sending an actual letter, technically inept for sending links to a private LinkedIn profile, and has a poor theory of mind regarding what an employer would like to see. This especial…
Cover letters are useless. Really, try to have some empathy for people trying to get jobs in a tough market (I guess this doesn't apply to the currently employed or developers...). You have to apply to a LOT of stuff, and employers almost never give the courtesy of a confirmation or any sort of response/rejection. It takes a LOT of time to put contact info into Word, change around your cover letter template, save, an…
Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
121–130 of 212 posts
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cover letters are useless. Really, try to have some empathy for people trying to get jobs in a tough market (I guess this doesn't apply to the currently employed or developers...). You have to apply to a LOT of stuff, and employers almost never give the courtesy of a confirmation or any sort of response/rejection. It takes a LOT of time to put contact info into Word, change around your cover letter template, save, an…
They're not useless. I discard any application I get that doesn't have a cover letter. I'm WAY more interested in your cover letter than your resume as it tells me a lot more about you than your dot-point-resume will ever tell me. To be fair, the job ads I place specifically tell you what to put in a cover letter. So if you reply without one, then it's a super quick filter to see that you didn't even read the ad. If…
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Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rockstars are a myth. So are low-level engineers who "know what they're doing." Hire smart people who can learn new things instead of resume bullet points and/or mythological creatures.
> Rockstars are a myth No they are not. One would think it's easy to find smart people who can learn new things , but I've dealt with both young and senior developers (by senior I mean writing code 15+ years) and was amazed how most of them feel comfortable being completely ignorant of new technologies/libraries/frameworks/best practices/whatever. I've met a rockstar the other day, and could feel him being the one I'…
...and was amazed how most of them feel comfortable being completely ignorant of new technologies/libraries/frameworks/best practices/whatever.
I don't know how to judge that comment.
It is true that if you take anyone who is competent and ask them to teach you something that they learned in the last year, they should be able to come up with something. If not, then you've likely got "1 year of experience, 15 times". However my experience of people who think that they can judge people in the way you are judging them will judge by asking random questions about random technologies. Which is basically rolling the dice - if the person is exploring the same things that you are, then they get the gold star, otherwise you are convinced that they don't.
Let me give you a concrete example. You ask me what my primary language is. Perl, but right now I'm doing a bit of work in C++. Now you know that I'm a dinosaur because I'm using archaic languages. But don't notice that I have actually programmed in a host of other languages, and at this point learning the latest language is not going to help me be better at what I do. If I need it, I'll learn it then.
You ask me something about promises and jQuery and I draw a blank. I never liked front end work, and I've been working on back end stuff for the last decade. Boom, I'm a dinosaur in your books. But ask me what I'm reading, and you'll find out that I'm working through a book on hierarchical Bayesian modeling. I've also been doing some thinking about how people fail to understand the statistics behind A/B tests, and have been working on a series of articles that a lot of people seem to like.
In short, it is likely that you would quickly judge me poorly. Yet I believe that this reflects more on your judgement than my abilities.
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#124I tested this and when I send two line replies to the ads in the hirin thread I get a better response than when I send my CV. Go figure.
From your experience, does this two lines reply works as well when you address it to a named email instead of job@company.com ?
Names do provide better results. If they are not provided in the ad, I just send them a quick email asking who is in charge of hiring. Then address the email to that person.
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#125I should probably post a "Dear HN 'Who's hiring' posters". And put following content.
With the same token that you say HN is not a CraigsList, when an HN-responder puts an effort in going through their product and writing a personal note inquiring about a possible opportunity at their company, posters should have the courtesy to respond to the responder acknowledging that in-spite of their good/bad profile they can't hire him/her.
I know these two advices are from me to you and you to me. All the remaining folks who have been one-liners will continue to be so.
Btw, I am a graduating student from IIT Delhi, who have applied to many startups that interested me with a personal-note and list of projects I have done with clickable-links. While about 10% of posters responded saying that they did like my profile but can't take it further because of visa, remaining 90% never responded.
While I am not the best engineer, when my detailed & clear personal application doesn't get an acknowledgement reply, I can imagine why responders are just sending one-liners. If posters want to hire, they will hire from one-liners. No point of detailed-personal application.
On a side note, my profile with links to projects is https://gist.github.com/sravfeyn/13534c67812183235a2c/ I am hunting for an engineering position at a start-up with product-innovation.
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not familiar with that stat but it's perfectly believable. Many people are clearly getting by with a mixture of memorization and trial-and-error rather than understanding. I think of those who understand algorithmic reasoning (i.e. understand loops, assignment, etc.) they also fall into two categories. Those who can understand more abstract programming concepts (indirect referencing, recursion) and those who can'…
Recursion isn't hard, it's just not taught correctly. It's fairly easy to break it down into rules. Because they are shown examples, instead of taught how, people memorize how to do stuff, instead of learning it from principles. Take the classic question, recursively reverse a linked list. You will see a lot of people making false starts, or trying to reverse the list in some way like they would reverse an array, or…
Replying so that i can go back to this and understand it one day
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" seems appropriate. Of course, the counter to that is that taking a dump in a thousand baskets also leads to no eggs.
>taking a dump in a thousand baskets also leads to no eggs While the quote is very funny and I give you that, the analogy doesn't fit. A more apt analogy would be - throwing your eggs without care in a thousand baskets, chances are most eggs will break.
That strategy requires that you have brass eggs.
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#128I'd take the opposite approach: be glad when applicants send such poor cover letters because it immediately lets you know you should NOT waste your time on them. Some one who would send such a bad boilerplate cover letter is lazy for not sending an actual letter, technically inept for sending links to a private LinkedIn profile, and has a poor theory of mind regarding what an employer would like to see. This especial…
Cover letters are useless. Really, try to have some empathy for people trying to get jobs in a tough market (I guess this doesn't apply to the currently employed or developers...). You have to apply to a LOT of stuff, and employers almost never give the courtesy of a confirmation or any sort of response/rejection. It takes a LOT of time to put contact info into Word, change around your cover letter template, save, an…
I've hired developers whose middle-of-the-road CVs I otherwise would have ignored, thanks to their cover letters.
A line as simple as "I like the sound of product X and think my skill in Y could be useful." makes you stand out way more than you might think.
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not useless. I discard any application I get that doesn't have a cover letter. I'm WAY more interested in your cover letter than your resume as it tells me a lot more about you than your dot-point-resume will ever tell me. To be fair, the job ads I place specifically tell you what to put in a cover letter. So if you reply without one, then it's a super quick filter to see that you didn't even read the ad. If…
I discard any employer that requires a cover letter. Cover letters don't tell you anything. If you think they do, you don't know how most people write them, and you probably miss a lot of good candidates. It's an unreasonable demand. You're not the only place that I am applying. Either I send all fifteen of you a generic cover letter (which is likely no better than not sending one), or I customize it for each of you,…
You're doing it wrong. I just want a quick note explaining briefly who you are and why you're applying. It shouldn't take more than five minutes.
Seriously, try hiring someone, the influx of irrelevant applicants and those who won't take even thirty seconds to read your ad is truly dispiriting. If you make even the tiniest effort with your application, you will stand out, guaranteed.
Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recursion isn't hard, it's just not taught correctly. It's fairly easy to break it down into rules. Because they are shown examples, instead of taught how, people memorize how to do stuff, instead of learning it from principles. Take the classic question, recursively reverse a linked list. You will see a lot of people making false starts, or trying to reverse the list in some way like they would reverse an array, or…
Replying so that i can go back to this and understand it one day
Mark, when you come back to this, this might be helpful for you. https://github.com/gryftir/recursivereverse