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It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

simonwillison.net

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Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#141

Post by WJW »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #122
okeuro49 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your blog post: > Got another programming job. Got fired for "performance." I think the reason wasn’t good, but I also have a hard time building a theory of mind, which means I can’t read code written by others. If you can't read code written by others, that's going to be a big concern for companies that require you to read and modify other people's code. Perhaps you need to be a contractor, not an employee.

Yikes! https://gavinhoward.com/2023/04/rust-is-dead-to-me/ > Rust the language is dead to me. > why? > Because, quite literally, the Rust Foundation wants to make people like me unwelcome in any Rust event, not just official ones. > Don’t believe me? > Look at the draft Rust Trademark Policy that the Rust Foundation is asking for comments on and go to page 12: > > We will consider requests to use the Marks on a case…

America is such a wild place lol. How dangerous can a Rust conference really be?

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#142

Post by thom »

rewmie wrote: post #70
BossingAround wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for companies like Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, Mongo, ..., my experience is that a good blog or a good Github doesn't account to anything more than a few pleasant sentences at the beginning of the interview. Of course, it might happen that they'd hire contributors, as you say. I'd say this is incredibly rare (but does happen). Usually, from my experience, this happens when the company wants to essentially "acquire…

> (...) my experience is that a good blog or a good Github doesn't account to anything more than a few pleasant sentences at the beginning of the interview. A few years ago I was offered a job explicitly because I had a github account where I hosted a public project that used a framework. Later, I was the recruiter in a few hiring rounds, and public source code repos was my primary source of data to assess q candidat…

As in, not even #pragma once, or you consider nonstandard stuff disqualifying?

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#143

Post by haspok »

_sojh wrote: post #126
intellectronica wrote: post #33

100%. Especially in a tough, competitive job market like today's, having a credible portfolio of work, published content, and external validation makes a huge difference. It can take a good candidate to the top of the list, and when that list is a few dozen great applications, that's critical. As a hiring manager I weigh a candidate's public presence at 10~15% of my initial decision, even more if it's exceptionally i…

This may be the uncommon opinion, but hell no. Companies already want us working an amount of hours well beyond what our salaries should cover, being on-call, and often working well into the night for deadlines, and sometimes the entire night into the next work day when incidents arise. Then, when we need a job, we need to custom write a compelling “cover letter” that sucks the dick of some corporate entity in order…

> Why do I want to work for your company? Because I need to eat to survive and you’re hiring.

This is embodied in the contractor lifestyle: no corporate bullshit, no politics, and the "you give me money, I give you a limited slice of my time and skills" equation is crystal clear, without any BS like "we are a family", and such like.

> You know what gets people offer letters? Word of mouth referrals by highly revered coworkers.

Equally relevant as a contractor. And the bonus is that interviews are usually done quicker than for permies, actually, the last time I had a single 45 minute interview, with a minimal amount of technical questions asked (YMMV!).

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#144

Post by flir »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #131
flir wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude's getting eviscerated for his opinions, but you're right, it's the attitude that's the red flag. I'd avoid hiring his political polar opposite too, if they were this petty/angry about it. I wonder if he's going to listen to the advice and present as more milquetoast when using his real name, or double down.

Even discounting finding his opinions objectionable (which, in my opinion, any reasonable person would), I'd pass on someone who posts this kind of content purely because they're a ticking time bomb. I don't want them to piss off a big client or explode because of a work disagreement while they're packing heat. I wouldn't want to hire them knowing that I might have to fear for my life even a little if I need to fire…

> which, in my opinion, any reasonable person would

Well, yeah, but I'm European, which means I'm practically a Communist ;) I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt, because "dude, tone it down a bit, you're spookin' the horses" is easier to swallow than "everything you believe is wrong".

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#145

Post by hef19898 »

WJW wrote: post #141
pcthrowaway wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes! https://gavinhoward.com/2023/04/rust-is-dead-to-me/ > Rust the language is dead to me. > why? > Because, quite literally, the Rust Foundation wants to make people like me unwelcome in any Rust event, not just official ones. > Don’t believe me? > Look at the draft Rust Trademark Policy that the Rust Foundation is asking for comments on and go to page 12: > > We will consider requests to use the Marks on a case…

America is such a wild place lol. How dangerous can a Rust conference really be?

To someone writing only C?

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#146

Post by WJW »

okeuro49 wrote: post #29
gavinhoward wrote: post #6

Unlike another top poster, this doesn't ring true for me. I have a blog with 170-ish posts. About half are technical. Three or four have gone viral on HN. The other half are personal, but I live in a place where people generally share the same values, so those other posts shouldn't be a problem. I've got a personal project. It's used in production and ships as part of the base install with FreeBSD and Mac OSX. It dem…

Your blog post: > Got another programming job. Got fired for "performance." I think the reason wasn’t good, but I also have a hard time building a theory of mind, which means I can’t read code written by others. If you can't read code written by others, that's going to be a big concern for companies that require you to read and modify other people's code. Perhaps you need to be a contractor, not an employee.

> Perhaps you need to be a contractor, not an employee.

If you can't read code by written by others, being a (software) contractor is probably the worst job you could have. Now you need to read new code at every new client you start at.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#147

Post by WJW »

hef19898 wrote: post #145
WJW wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is such a wild place lol. How dangerous can a Rust conference really be?

To someone writing only C?

I doubt that even a C-only programmer at a Rust conference would be in such danger that it would require firearms to mitigate. But that is my European perspective anyway, perhaps Rust programmers in the USA are significantly more vicious.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#148

Post by thom »

Just a note for anyone who needs to hear it: you don’t even necessarily have to be a maintainer and have complete open source repos to show off. If your entire GitHub is you just forking libraries, fixing a bug or adding a feature, and then creating a somewhat tasteful PR then I find that extremely reassuring. It means you’re doing real work, experiencing pain, diagnosing the issue and fixing it. I do not need to see seventeen green badges at the top of a readme to be impressed.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#149

Post by Cymrukicks »

gonzo41 wrote: post #67
ahartmetz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be when they see that https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/petty-tyrant-businesses

This sort of thing is a instant black ball almost everywhere.

Wouldn't hire him on a supermarket checkout counter, the guy seems insane.

Re: It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#150

Post by Propelloni »

sph wrote: post #117
maccard wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wanted to write a couple posts about anarchism on my personal blog, nothing crazy, and kept being concerned it might drive off a potential recruiter. Who the hell cares, a company where I cannot have a touch of personality is not a place I want to work at either. If it's important to you then you should. There are places that allow/encourage people to be individuals. >The only potentially "controversial" idea (as…

> That said be careful what you write and how you phrase it because it's one thing to have an opinion, and another to make a statement like that. That's the bloody point. Fuck having to walk on eggshells, especially when I made it quite clear I have no issues with that. I had to be quite careful with the wording, and I know exactly this opens me to be attacked and pointed out as a bigot because I equated gender ident…

No, what you are railing against is that your actions have consequences. But it is your choice wether you are willing to bear them and act or not and do not act. That's a basic anarchist tenet reaching back to the Cynics of ancient Greece.

The things you say in public could be heard by someone and those someones have the gall to form an opinion of you you don't like -- some may even confront you about it.

Disagreement, unemployability, hostility, these are among the prices we pay for saying things in public places such as the internet. You can decide to pay the price and maybe turn it into a fruitful discussion (granted, unlikely on the internet) or you can shut up and seethe with anger for "being silenced".

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