Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Cold Email

zachholman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 133 posts

Re: The Cold Email

#111

Post by t0mpr1c3 »

gerdesj wrote: post #35
tayo42 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like companies that are genuinely interesting are pretty rare. Then you'll still get two rounds of leet code and system design.

Well my little company has at least three employees that came back again after leaving. Two of them are still here. We are not particularly interesting ... What I'm advocating for here is trying out new (old) methods of waving your CV/resume at an employer. I graduated as a civil engineering technician (BTEC HND) in the UK in 1990. I did a "sabbatical" ... cough rag (basically pissed up for a year for charity is a fa…

Good advice. Job boards are actually the lowest probability option. The trouble is, they are often still the best option.

When you don't have previous experience or contacts in the industry you can wait a long time for an opportunity.

Interning, open source, microqualifications, freelancing, self employment -- I've done the lot.

What I have learned is: work for your salary, but always keep your eye on the next job.

The marketplace is extremely transactional. Expect to provide value from day 1, and forget working your way up.

Re: The Cold Email

#112

Post by t0mpr1c3 »

6stringmerc wrote: post #28

This is why I tend to write real letters using my IBM Selectric III and send them via physical mail. I enjoy writing. Writing with purpose is time well spent. 90% of the time I get no response. I’m not actively trying to find the next recipient, it just comes naturally, so I see no reason to stop. When is the last time you got an actual typed or hand written letter? That’s my advantage.

Weird flex because electronic communications are easier to write, easier to send, and get there faster.

In answer to your question, it was probably junk mail from a realtor. And they only hand wrote the address.

Re: The Cold Email

#113

Post by t0mpr1c3 »

I once got a job by sending a cold email. I was overqualified and took a pay cut of more than 50%.

It was a stepping stone. I would rather have done it in my 20s than in my 50s, but I had been unemployed for a year.

When I had an academic job I used to receive cold emails from students in Asian countries. They uniformly came across as desperate.

No other way to initiate a conversation has a higher chance of being completely ignored.

Re: The Cold Email

#115

Post by 392 »

tombert wrote: post #29

Something I learned awhile ago is that most people that I consider "celebrities" really aren't that famous, and as such are generally pretty happy to respond to emails. In ~2014 I sent an email to Joe Armstrong (one of the creators of Erlang) asking some questions about concurrency because I still didn't fully understand why Erlang was supposed to be better for it. I expected him to just point me to an FAQ or simply…

You should ask him if we can read the email please :-)

Re: The Cold Email

#116

Post by gwbas1c »

Cold outreach is great when it's personal.

SPAM isn't: I don't want automated cold outreach. I don't want something trying to fake making it look personal.

I wish that we could turn off email / phone where anyone can reach out to anyone, and instead make it so that you have to work through your network; and your network acts as the first filter. (And if some bozo in your network passes too much SPAM to you, you can block them.)

Re: The Cold Email

#117

Post by duxup »

As a teen and in my early 20s I was a pretty skeptical / negative dude. I probably would be on team "not worth it, don't bother" when it comes to cold email.

I was also kinda bad in school (not really trying and not doing well) and so on.

Buddy who worked outsourced tech support with me while he took school seriously and I did not graduated (while I did not) and got a job. They had a referral bonus at his company and he convinced to "just apply". I hadn't graduated and really wasn't making much progress or very impressive, but I did it just for the interview experience.

I got the job, the guy who hired me later said "you seemed honest". My whole tech career took off from there, good money, I got lucky and worked with good people. Later after age 40 after a layoff I decided to try a coding bootcamp when folks were downplaying those programs. Some rando small company took a chance on me and didn't pay much but it was a job and I took a chance on them.

Nearly 10 years later I'm happy with my work, doing good financially, all because I took a couple shots.

The local university has a coach who is big on "failure is progress" and other cute slogans, and in my collage years I would have been cynical brushed it off as "just words". But it was also just words when the guy told "just apply".

I watch that coach's team and there are kids out there failing, I think they're some of the bravest guys. They daring to bust their ass year round and maybe just fail in front of tens of thousands people. I wouldn't have done it at their age, but they're taking their shot.

It took me a long time to understand the value (and low cost) of taking a shot, and what "just words" really represents.

Re: The Cold Email

#118

Post by duxup »

gerdesj wrote: post #30

I'm probably somewhat older than most here. What OP is describing is what used to be normal and should still be! In the past it was normal to write a CV (resume) and a covering letter that was mildly tailored to each target firm, either in response to a job advert or on spec. I'm not talking quill pens here - you'd do a mail merge and buy a really large book of stamps. Linked In is possibly the worst thing that ever…

When applying for jobs I often wish I could just have 5 min with the "boss" in charge of the given role. Or even just have them do a video talking about what they do... that's it, that's all the meat. I'll happily watch thousands and skip what doesn't fit me and pick what does ...

But everything is hidden.

Re: The Cold Email

#119

Post by jongjong »

summarybot wrote: post #102
jongjong wrote: post #79

My biggest mistake in life was thinking too big and aiming too high. Now I absolutely hate the saying "If you want to reach the moon, aim for the stars." This belief ruined me. The people who were writing desperate emails and bending over to get a wage-slave job are much better off now. Meanwhile I was trying to raise funding for big ideas from big investors; it was a complete waste of time. Reality is "If you want t…

Do you find this to be true in romance as well?

Makes me think. I can't be as confident there as I got lucky in that respect so my perception is distorted towards "it's easy". Based on what I observe from other people, I would think so as well.

I think relationships are heavily based on who you are and what you project and it's extremely nuanced. Some trivial physical or personality feature that you have can radically shape people's perception of you and there's often nothing you can do about that.

Sometimes a (perceived) flaw that you have can actually work in your favor as the other person may see it as a benefit. Relationships are as much about attracting the right people as they are about repelling the wrong people.

Re: The Cold Email

#120

Post by rozap »

agos wrote: post #81
hack1312 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erlang is so freaking cool, I’ve been itching for a project to use it (or Elixir, especially because I’m a huge Ruby fan) with ever since I learned about it/OTP when digging into the internals of Chef (server) and RabbitMQ, followed up by the book “Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good!” (an adaption of /book inspired by another wonderful book I read called “Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!”). Non-sequitur but I us…

I'm here to make your itch worse! we're using Elixir to build a fintech SaaS and it's by far the most dependable, boring, lovable part of our stack. We built critical parts with it (syncing data with external services, for one) and were just able to basically forget about it for years because it just... ran? Erlang/Elixir are definitely not the best for everything, but if there's a good match it's unbeatable

Sometimes I think about how much of a pain it would be for our company to not use elixir. We would be spending so much time on mundane ops stuff and not building the thing. Such a lovely programming model and ecosystem.
Post reply on HN