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Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

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Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#71

Post by gr3yh47 »

pnathan wrote: post #69

Everyone is different in what they look for. I look for curiosity, learning, drive, achievements(professional and at home), and academics (completed degrees in CS/Math are important to me). Grammatical and spelling errors irritate me, a lot . Being cutesy with resumes irritates me. Wasting my time irritates me. I am fine reading resumes that are up to 5 pages in length (but many people aren't). * Suck it up and set u…

I appreciate all of the feedback and will be incorporating a lot of it.

what did you mean by a wc replacement?

>You're not an expert - if you are, you'd not be looking for entry level positions, and you likely wouldn't be a hobbyist. You'd probably have a history of consulting in your expert field.

Seriously, everyone is failing on comprehension on that one sentence. I'm an expert in my field looking to pivot to another. Expert SYSTEMS engineer. I'm changing the sentence to prevent future misreads.

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#72

Post by gr3yh47 »

ukigumo wrote: post #13

I would suggest some changes to your resume, mainly to bring out your programming skills and expertise and then to highlight that you have significant work experience with system engineering so you are not a neophyte and can actually add something "else" to your team. Starting with the Summary, I would change from "Expert Systems Engineer with a passion for programming seeking an entry level development position in a…

i took your suggestion nearly verbatim. thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#73

Post by baumy »

As a general rule, never call yourself an expert in anything. For one thing, you're probably not. Just as importantly, don't say that you're an expert, demonstrate that you are. Experts don't have to tell other people that they're experts. Going off nothing but the content of the resume, I see nothing to make me think you're an expert systems engineer, which makes me think you're overestimating your own skills, which is a huge red flag. Saying you have excellent communication skills (which again is saying instead of demonstrating), when the resume has multiple typos lends to the perception that you don't have the skills to back up your claims, which is enough to make me pass on the resume entirely.

Honestly, sorry to be harsh, but I'd scrap the whole thing and start over, taking into account all the good advice in here.

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#74

Post by ukigumo »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #72
ukigumo wrote: post #13

I would suggest some changes to your resume, mainly to bring out your programming skills and expertise and then to highlight that you have significant work experience with system engineering so you are not a neophyte and can actually add something "else" to your team. Starting with the Summary, I would change from "Expert Systems Engineer with a passion for programming seeking an entry level development position in a…

i took your suggestion nearly verbatim. thanks.

hopefully without the typo :-)

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#75

Post by eldavido »

pnathan wrote: post #70
shayanjm wrote: post #46

No, I wouldn't hire you as-is. Probably not a first-choice intern either. Some notes on why not: + Your web-sume looks rough. As pointed out by others, there are a number of typos (i.e: "and provide an opporunity") not to mention the design itself could use work. If you are GREAT at web design/UX you should spruce it up. Otherwise, kill it and move to a traditional resume. Knowing HTML5/CSS3 today is pretty meaningle…

Personally, I don't care about usage of git/hg. That can be dealt with on the job, and is no worse than hiring someone from another shop. As a matter of fact and recommendation, I don't think atomic commits are a great practice to follow in general anyway.

I agree. I wasn't going to turn this into a general conversation about branching, but since others are going there...

I really dislike gitflow for release-to-web projects. Any form of branching creates integration debt to be paid later. Maybe it's worth it, for instance, when discussing a new feature in its own branch. But gitflow's assumption of a heavyweight "release" process just isn't an accurate reflection of how the best companies work today. For a high-frequency deployment cadence (once/day or more), the level of ceremony required to get a release out is too much. And companies really do have to release that frequently, as high-priority bugs come up, integrations with third-party systems break, etc.

github-flow or the "Continuous Development Flow" as we call it, is much better-suited for high-velocity web development.

I'd be interested to hear what people are using for mobile projects. Maybe gitflow makes sense there, but I don't know that a "hotfix" ever happens, I think people just fix the bug and release a new version to the world?

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#76

Post by shayanjm »

eldavido wrote: post #75
pnathan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I don't care about usage of git/hg. That can be dealt with on the job, and is no worse than hiring someone from another shop. As a matter of fact and recommendation, I don't think atomic commits are a great practice to follow in general anyway.

I agree. I wasn't going to turn this into a general conversation about branching, but since others are going there... I really dislike gitflow for release-to-web projects. Any form of branching creates integration debt to be paid later. Maybe it's worth it, for instance, when discussing a new feature in its own branch. But gitflow's assumption of a heavyweight "release" process just isn't an accurate reflection of ho…

Not here to say that one style is better than another, although I've used gitflow almost exclusively for a few years and it's served well. Pushed features/hotfixes/etc. out the door in a timely manner, and never felt held back by the 'ceremony' necessary to push to prod. CI handles most of that and with the 'git flow' plugin you can easily do a two command deploy while not compromising good branching/repo maintenance practices.

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#77

Post by 6d0debc071 »

Would I? Nope.

Big issue? Anyone can say they've done something - but it doesn't give me any idea of how well you've done it; what sort of constraints you operated under and what your results were like. Were you doing the bare minimum for a year or two? I won't know based on your CV. There's the inexperienced kid who just gets a few projects thrown their way and can say they worked on them, and there's someone who absolutely blew the problem out of the water and created a lot of value... but unless they talk about their achievements on their CV? They're indistinguishable from one another.

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#78

Post by atmosx »

shayanjm wrote: post #46

No, I wouldn't hire you as-is. Probably not a first-choice intern either. Some notes on why not: + Your web-sume looks rough. As pointed out by others, there are a number of typos (i.e: "and provide an opporunity") not to mention the design itself could use work. If you are GREAT at web design/UX you should spruce it up. Otherwise, kill it and move to a traditional resume. Knowing HTML5/CSS3 today is pretty meaningle…

I'm impressed by your comments. Could take the time and make a similar assessment of my github[1] account?

It's highly unlikely for me to ever work as a developer but I'd like to know what you think of it, nevertheless :-)

[1] https://github.com/atmosx

ps. In case you take the time to have a look at my repo... Well thanks for your time :-)

(everyone else, feel free to drop a line or two about my repo if you like)

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#79

Post by duval »

Seeing many negative comments here. As someone getting to grips with programming and who already has a paid position I do sometimes wonder what I would need to be doing / know to have a more advanced position.

What do people want, and how should I say I have what people want (assuming i do)

Re: Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

#80

Post by jorgecastillo »

baumy wrote: post #73

As a general rule, never call yourself an expert in anything. For one thing, you're probably not. Just as importantly, don't say that you're an expert, demonstrate that you are. Experts don't have to tell other people that they're experts. Going off nothing but the content of the resume, I see nothing to make me think you're an expert systems engineer, which makes me think you're overestimating your own skills, which…

>don't say that you're an expert, demonstrate that you are.

There's so much awesome in this phrase, I am adding it to my .bashrc

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