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The difference between a programmer & a hacker

hackerjobs.co.uk

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Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#11

Post by zalew »

Peroni wrote: post #3
abulman wrote: post #2

I've occasionally taken to send out a 'nano' CV - with my contact details, a paragraph of text and 3 URLs. My Stackoverflow account, Github, and my tech blog. I've also been responsible for hiring developers over the last five years and if I saw something like that, and there was anything useful to see on those links, the person would be at the top of the shortlist. The only time I ever came close to it - I offered t…

Absolutely spot on. Any hiring manager will have at least a dozen CV's in his inbox. Nano CV's take seconds to read and you are instantly made aware of the candidates ability plus it also gives an excellent indication of confidence in said ability which is a crucial factor in finding good people.

There's a deep secret of HR most of us programmers don't know of or understand - CVs are often printed on paper and transfered to other desks by hand. While it'd be exciting for a nerd to receive, in a traditional HR dept such a 'nano-cv' or what you call it will quickly become a piece of garbage just as it hits the printer.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#12

Post by inm »

gwat wrote: post #8

I always have a problem in mind while in college, and the problem becomes my real problem. If my day job requires me to work from 9am to 8pm, excluding 1 hour round trip commute, which is a norm in the city I am living in, how can I squeeze out time to maintain a meaningful github repo/ SO profile / tech blog? I really want to sharpen my skills AND display it, but my day job already take up literally half of my life.

I feel you there. For the best part of the last five years I've been commuting 3-4 hours on top of a typical 8 hour working day.

I guess it depends on your situation. I was fortunate enough to spend most of that on the train and typically able to get a seat so usually able to code, and always at the very least read, so I managed to make use of this time.

Other than that, I've put plenty of weekends into my projects too.

As Steve said, if you're passionate enough about it you'll find a way.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#13

Post by Peroni »

zalew wrote: post #11
Peroni wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely spot on. Any hiring manager will have at least a dozen CV's in his inbox. Nano CV's take seconds to read and you are instantly made aware of the candidates ability plus it also gives an excellent indication of confidence in said ability which is a crucial factor in finding good people.

There's a deep secret of HR most of us programmers don't know of or understand - CVs are often printed on paper and transfered to other desks by hand. While it'd be exciting for a nerd to receive, in a traditional HR dept such a 'nano-cv' or what you call it will quickly become a piece of garbage just as it hits the printer.

To be fair, if you are applying to a HR contact, then traditional is the way to go. I'd only ever recommend the use of 'nano' CV's if you can directly contact the person who makes the final decision.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#15

Post by Ziomislaw »

soren_dahl wrote: post #5

I'd just like to thank you for putting all the clueless recruiters out there into a frenzied word search for "Github". Yours, A Bitbucket User

he does mention nongithub possibilities, quote: "[...]GitHub account or at least a portfolio of personal work hosted on the candidates own website[...]"

Though I certainly agree with you, people don't seem to notice any other hosting repositories.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#16

Post by marcusf »

"You can't fake passion"

Honestly though, this gives a decent three step template for how to get yourself on the top of the pile in about ~1-5h worth of work:

1. Register a GitHub account, fork some projects that look cool

2. Register a domain, set up a yourname.github.com page for hosting, and add your contact info and link to github, whatever. Set up a mail redirector.

3. Upload your own project. If you don't have one, probably a good idea is to replicate some basic utility. How about pretty printing JSON using python from the command line?

Bam! Passion, done. For extra credit, create a blog and write two-three posts on why Java is verbose, something on getting started with node.js on your machine and a benchmark of your json utility and another one.

In all sincerity, when I look at candidates I also look hard for passion, and a blog, github, stackoverflow, etc puts them at the top of the pile.

As a counter anecdote, I've worked with tons of really, really good developers who went home at five, and came in at nine, and brought it every day. For most of them, life happened and with two kids it's harder to be prolific or show resume-friendly passion.

On the other hand, I doubt any of them will ever need to send in a resume anyway.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#17

Post by zalew »

Peroni wrote: post #13
zalew wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a deep secret of HR most of us programmers don't know of or understand - CVs are often printed on paper and transfered to other desks by hand. While it'd be exciting for a nerd to receive, in a traditional HR dept such a 'nano-cv' or what you call it will quickly become a piece of garbage just as it hits the printer.

To be fair, if you are applying to a HR contact, then traditional is the way to go. I'd only ever recommend the use of 'nano' CV's if you can directly contact the person who makes the final decision.

Let's be honest: that only can work for small startups ran by young technical people or very small software houses where the 3-5 employees are in one room next to each other. In any company where there's even a slight hint of a corporate structure, you have to provide just what they are asking for or you'll be that dude who sent us a cv with no cv on it.

//edit: Actually, now I remember I was that guy many years ago. I was applying for a programmer at the tech dept of a publisher. Sent a very short cv with some basic data and a link to portfolio. The head of IT (actually a clueless older dude on sweatshop wage) came with a print, took a look at it very disappointed and said "that's the shortest cv I've received". And there wasn't even a laptop around to check my portfolio while speaking. From what I saw there I didn't want to work for them anyway, but it still proves my point.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#18

Post by Natsu »

Peroni wrote: post #10
gwat wrote: post #8

I always have a problem in mind while in college, and the problem becomes my real problem. If my day job requires me to work from 9am to 8pm, excluding 1 hour round trip commute, which is a norm in the city I am living in, how can I squeeze out time to maintain a meaningful github repo/ SO profile / tech blog? I really want to sharpen my skills AND display it, but my day job already take up literally half of my life.

I do understand your frustation and to be perfectly honest, I hear the same concern constantly . The fact is, if you're truly passionate about something, you'll find the time. I work a 60 hour week and I have a 2 year old boy and an impatient wife at home yet I find the time to dedicate at least a couple of hours a week to blogs, news, forums and so on and I can sincerely say that it doesn't have any significant impa…

If you put it that way, someone will create a Github repo of nothing but fizzbuzzes in random languages like Erlang, Whitespace, Prolog, CoffeeScript, Intercal, Malboge, Perl, 0x10^c assembly, ...

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#19

Post by jaimzob »

"I will instantly disregard any CV that doesn't have reference to a GitHub account"

Well bravo you. The problem with recruitment in our industry is not the candidates with no GitHub account, its the egomaniacal interviewers who waste no opportunity to turn any interview, in this case any application, into a passive-aggressive pissing contest.

Perhaps its acceptable for an interview to be adversarial, but I don't think any other industry matches the tech industry for the utter hostility of the interview process.

Re: The difference between a programmer & a hacker

#20

Post by Peroni »

jaimzob wrote: post #19

"I will instantly disregard any CV that doesn't have reference to a GitHub account" Well bravo you. The problem with recruitment in our industry is not the candidates with no GitHub account, its the egomaniacal interviewers who waste no opportunity to turn any interview, in this case any application , into a passive-aggressive pissing contest. Perhaps its acceptable for an interview to be adversarial, but I don't thi…

I disagree. The problem you mention is certainly a problem but it's by no means the problem.

My disregard of people who don't commit to their own projects is entirely a personal choice and I didn't intend on that point to be a direction.

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