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Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

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Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#171

Post by logicallee »

justathrow2k wrote: post #158
logicallee wrote: post #56

and they say geography isn't destiny. a design like this can get a solo founder a $2M valuation on an idea in the valley (making him an instant millionaire), whereas a slovakian is trying hard to close an internsihp (meaning he hasn't gotten $8/hr, or 1/250000th of that amount.) 1/250000th.

A design like that coupled with a product that people think has some value, perhaps.

Yes, of course. I said "on an idea" meaning a product that people think has some value -- but nothing more than this web site design around that idea.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#173

Post by hn_ »

Nadya wrote: post #164
danielvinson wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for not including pictures is entirely a legal issue. If a picture is included in the resume and the company decides to not hire that person (despite being qualified), they could sue for discrimination. If the company instead throws out ALL resumes with pictures, they don't ever get sued. Logically, any company that is large enough to have a legal team should be expected to throw out all resumes with pictu…

I'm well aware it's entirely a legal issue. Notice how I said the law is outdated? Laws aren't known for keeping up to date with technology. Imagine a resume for a technological position as a programmer in a company. The person includes their Github account, where they are using a picture of themselves as their avatar. What do you do in that scenario? A personal picture is frequently used as an avatar on Github. Thei…

The law doesn't say "you can't ask candidates for their photo" it says "you can't discriminate based on race/gender/pregnancy status/ethnicity/age (>40)/national origin in hiring practices."

If you are soliciting or encouraging photos of someone for a software job it looks suspicious - why would you need to know what a candidate looks like when looks aren't part of how well you can write software? Then you start looking like you plan to discriminate. The idea is not to solicit photos of candidates when their looks are irrelevant to the position. One HR policy may say "don't accept resume with photos so it doesn't look like we encourage all candidates to send them." Note: that isn't law but it could be company policy to protect them. Where the line is drawn probably varies by company and is probably arbitrary. Linking to your GitHub that happens to also contain your photo is probably not a big deal to anyone. Having an online resume where half the screen is taken up by your picture is different, it is no different than a paper resume that has your smiling face in the corner. I don't use GitHub (I don't have the time - I'm too old) but I understand it to be a more "social" and "casual" atmosphere which a photo is acceptable while a resume is a "professional" document that might also link to a more "casual" document.

The "rule of thumb" of not including your photo with a resume is because it is irrelevant to your job qualifications and was previously used to openly discriminate. This is a big deal since people here at HN have shared their stories of discrimination based on age - would someone who is aging an a little over weight want to dedicate half a computer screen to their picture?

Companies may just request that any information sent to them doesn't include a photo - this is a reasonable request. With this request they have covered their legal basis of saying "we aren't judging your resume based on how you look" but also might not throw out something that gives away your looks.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#174

Post by ainsej »

quadrature wrote: post #149
lachenmayer wrote: post #97

Hey Marek, I see you've been accepted at UCL, would you like to check out what London is like? We at HackCampus http://hackcampus.io/ could offer you a 10-week internship at some amazing startups (GoCardless, SwiftKey, Kano and more) in London this summer. It's well-paid, and we'll give you free accommodation over the summer with a batch of other awesome student hackers like yourself. http://hackcampus.io/internship/…

Is this only for students in the UK ?

Nope, anybody who is legally allowed to work in the UK (so EU member states included)

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#175

Post by danielvinson »

Nadya wrote: post #164
danielvinson wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for not including pictures is entirely a legal issue. If a picture is included in the resume and the company decides to not hire that person (despite being qualified), they could sue for discrimination. If the company instead throws out ALL resumes with pictures, they don't ever get sued. Logically, any company that is large enough to have a legal team should be expected to throw out all resumes with pictu…

I'm well aware it's entirely a legal issue. Notice how I said the law is outdated? Laws aren't known for keeping up to date with technology. Imagine a resume for a technological position as a programmer in a company. The person includes their Github account, where they are using a picture of themselves as their avatar. What do you do in that scenario? A personal picture is frequently used as an avatar on Github. Thei…

But how would you change laws to best account for this? It is not a trivial task, and current lawmakers are on average not very good with technology, so there would be a lot of research.

The best thing to do as an employer is to ask the candidate to directly provide code samples. If they don't understand why this would be necessary (or understand your explanation), they are probably not going to be a good employee anyway.

That said, when I receive github links with resumes, I always look at them (and often spend a long time reviewing the code). If the user has a non-picture avatar it is very relieving. I wish GitHub and LinkedIn would provide a build-in service to change your photo into an avatar or something to avoid this.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#177

Post by silverbax88 »

Joky wrote: post #140
silverbax88 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hired a lot of developers over the last 15 years and not once have I cared if they have a github account.

Well since GitHub is only ~5 years old it is not very surprising...

I'm more likely to ask what source control you have used. If you say Git, I'm going to ask why. I'm going to figure out if you really understand source code or you just use what's popular. That is not a statement about Git or any other source control. But I don't need to see your github account to figure out what level of developer you are (or what level you think you are).

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#178

Post by silverbax88 »

teraflop wrote: post #136
silverbax88 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hired a lot of developers over the last 15 years and not once have I cared if they have a github account.

It doesn't really matter much to me whether the projects somebody has worked on are open-source. But if they can't be demonstrated to exist , that's something else entirely.

I promise you I can figure out if you can code or not in about 15 minutes. I don't mean cobble together Angular and Bootstrap. I need to figure out if you can actually code and what kind of person you are to work with.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#179

Post by dfinninger »

infinitone wrote: post #143

Great presentation and design skill, you'll def land something. Though if you want big 4 or even big 20 tech companies, then you'll need to show more real code. A good 20k loc app would be nice.

Eh, I mean the dude is 19 and in High School. I sure as heck didn't have time for a 20k app while in school.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#180

Post by Nadya »

hn_ wrote: post #173
Nadya wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm well aware it's entirely a legal issue. Notice how I said the law is outdated? Laws aren't known for keeping up to date with technology. Imagine a resume for a technological position as a programmer in a company. The person includes their Github account, where they are using a picture of themselves as their avatar. What do you do in that scenario? A personal picture is frequently used as an avatar on Github. Thei…

The law doesn't say "you can't ask candidates for their photo" it says "you can't discriminate based on race/gender/pregnancy status/ethnicity/age (>40)/national origin in hiring practices." If you are soliciting or encouraging photos of someone for a software job it looks suspicious - why would you need to know what a candidate looks like when looks aren't part of how well you can write software? Then you start look…

The issue here isn't soliciting photos of candidates. In this case it's the employer possibly throwing out a perfectly fine resume because it includes a photo because of laws that do not account for the existence of social media profiles and the increasing likelihood that people have their actual visual personas online as pictures and avatars.

>Linking to your GitHub that happens to also contain your photo is probably not a big deal to anyone.

Nor should it be.

>Having an online resume where half the screen is taken up by your picture is different

Discriminating in 5 seconds after seeing the first image or discriminating after viewing the Github profile changes nothing if there is going to be discrimination (intentional or not) take place. In this case, his Github profile (which also contains his picture) is one of the first things you end up seeing while looking through his resume.

>Companies may just request that any information sent to them doesn't include a photo - this is a reasonable request. With this request they have covered their legal basis of saying "we aren't judging your resume based on how you look" but also might not throw out something that has a photo.

A statement that protects a company on legal grounds but is not actually enforceable is one of the issues with our legal system. This statement, if anything, introduces a legal scapegoat for actual discrimination and bias to take place without punishment. Any minority that sends or includes a picture by accident or slight could be tossed into the trash with this statement as the scapegoat. "We said not to include pictures or this might happen!" If anything it hurts more than helps.

The entire area of discrimination can be a tricky one - as proving it is discrimination is rather tricky and troublesome. This is why many discrimination lawsuits take place after a person has had an interview. Where, regardless of the lack of photo, your employer now knows what you look like and can openly discriminate against you.

Removing photos from resumes may lower open discrimination - but it also makes it more difficult to prosecute for discrimination. If an employer is throwing out any resume with a picture of a minority - it becomes far easier to prove they are discriminating against minorities. Wouldn't you agree?

Require a company to retain any applications from the past 6~12 months and to require photos. Discrimination based on age, race, or gender would be easier to prove - as well as if a candidate was lacking required credentials on their resume, etc.

I'm willing to hear flaws with my proposed method and how the current method is superior.

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