My Failure Resume • Hacker News Board

Re: My Failure Resume

#111

Post by nebulousthree » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

koch wrote: post #106

jimhi wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought like you until about a year ago. Marketing is a skill much like software development and people much less deserving than you are making far more money than you and actively saying things that making our world worse. I don't think you should dismiss getting better at it. That said, I don't disagree it's a mental illness.

> actively saying things that making our world worse. I don't think you should dismiss getting better at it. Well now that doesn't sound quite right, either, does it? Get better at saying things that make our world worse? I feel like both you and @todfox here, I hate what it is but I also know that it's absolutely necessary. It seems to be a lesson I keep relearning. But the ickiness of attention-seeking and going fo…

> But the ickiness of attention-seeking and going for the lowest common denominator really makes it hard for me to keep it up.

Attention-seeking, fine, but lowest common denominator is a self-defeating assumption. If my thing was making very elaborate high quality chairs, I don't have to make a bunch of crappy generic chairs to bring attention to the elaborate ones. The fear of failure in your niche may drive this though. But by doing so you're just growing the overall demographic you serve which brings in more people, giving you the impression of finally succeeding..but you may not get more sales of the product you actually care about in the first place: the elaborate chair.

My point is: go for the "denominator" you feel you want to address, and be enthusiastically attention-seeking there. Pretending to care about other demographics, building product for them and supporting all that extra infrastructure is soul-crushing

Re: My Failure Resume

#112

Post by barbarbar » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

Holy sh*t. That list is outright insane. They should be allowed to retire and just drink cocktails or something. I would not be able to do a tenth of that even if would live 900 years. Amazing.

Re: My Failure Resume

#113

Post by Supermancho » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #32

I really don't like the false modesty

The mentioning of school slights and "failures" seems disturbingly petty. It concerns me that someone remembers this kind of stuff as some sort of personal failure. He didn't "fail", as much as his 18 year old self did or was just unlucky. What does that matter?

Re: My Failure Resume

#114

Post by andrewstuart » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

The list of jobs is jobs unsuccessfully applied for is that right?

It can’t be a list of jobs that this person did, there’s too many to make sense. The blog post is not clear.

Re: My Failure Resume

#115

Post by jimhi » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

Endurancee wrote: post #101

I'm just impressed by sheer number of things you have done, failed or not. I really want to learn how do you manage your time to have done all these.

I didn't have money or income for the vast majority of this. Parents couldn't help. What else do you have to do than think about where your next dollar will come from?

Re: My Failure Resume

#116

Post by mym1990 » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:23 PM UTC

erikbhn wrote: post #3

Are you the Opentrons guy? And yes, this is the time for my favorite quote of all time: Ever tried, ever failed, no matter! Try again, fail again... fail better. - Samuel Beckett (punctuation by me, probably)

Stan Wawrinka(tennis player) has this tattooed on his forearm! Love the quote

Re: My Failure Resume

#117

Post by lisasays » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

overthrow wrote: post #57

ipaddr wrote: post #31

"CTO at Loyalsnap (02/23/2017): The CEO rejected me then used the code I wrote in the interview in production. When I pointed this out and said an estimate of the hours I worked on that if he wanted to use it, he told me I would have to sue him to get it. 20 minutes later he venmo’d me the amount and said don’t sue him." Happens more often then you think. Get 200 approaches on something that team can't get right. Use…

I can't wrap my head around why companies do this. If you find a competent programmer whose work is good enough to use, wouldn't your team be better off if you hire them full-time? That seems more efficient than interviewing 200 people every time you need some code written.

Logic has nothing to do with it. These companies shit on candidates on general principle.

Re: My Failure Resume

#118

Post by madamelic » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #52

jimhi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the interviews are like 1 out 400 applications.

Still, seems like you move up. I'm over a decade in and still a shitty midlevel.

What are you doing to move up?

I don't think I am anything special nor was I a super go-getter and I've moved up fine in the same time span (came in as an ~associate, moved up to senior in ~2 years, got principal in 1.5 years, sat around high-level senior / defacto tech lead for a few years until I finally got a break with an actual lead title).

You are either in too big of a pond (ie: you should work in a smaller place to have a bigger impact) or you are too focused on your own work to appear as someone worth bringing up.

I am not a boomer but if you are a software engineer who is wanting to move up past associate and especially senior, you need to be looking out for others, mentoring, writing documentation on why certain decisions were made; something more than just nose in the code.

The adage of "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" is kinda true. You don't even have to kill yourself for it either. I did the 10+ hour days for a year as a junior then I realized no one I wanted to care cared nor saw it as a point of pride.

Re: My Failure Resume

#119

Post by andrewstuart » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:40 PM UTC

jimhi wrote: post #17

olalonde wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also confused but those are jobs he applied for but wasn't hired.

Ones I got interviews for and didn't get

It should say that in the blog post.

It reads like a ridiculously long list of jobs you took and failed at.

Re: My Failure Resume

#120

Post by pradn » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

I really have to commend this person for just being so energetic with just DOING stuff, no matter the failure. I suppose you get used to it, making it easy to be "biased toward action". It's easier to win when you pull the slot machine so many times.