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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

#221

Post by wonderwonder »

BeetleB wrote: post #207
_sojh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tip: Work for an established company - preferably a non-Internet oriented one. Perhaps a traditional engineering company (you know, the type that actually manufactures something physical). Definitely not a startup. Or one that is not in tech (e.g. bank, hospital, etc). They typically will not work you that hard, and no one checks your blog or Github. Of course, there are downsides to this approach as well...

This is a good idea. I have found that since I started working for an old established fortune 500 [non tech] company, my work life balance is much better. Benefits are very good and no one bothers me when I take vacation. Get out of startup and tech specific companies unless you love development work.

Personally I don't like software development, I have just put on the golden handcuffs that software engineering provides. I cant switch careers and take a massive paycut to do something i like.

An old big company is a good place to work for those of us that just want to work our 40 - 45 hours a week, get a solid paycheck and live our lives. Plus you can do solid work and feel good about it without the local 10x developer coming in to tell you its wrong.

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

#222

Post by hoherd »

joezydeco wrote: post #210

Are you an embedded developer? Bring a show-and-tell to your next interview. Bring an example of something you've worked on. Doesn't have to be in a finished case. In fact, a raw PCB can be more effective. Make sure 1) the product has already been released to the public and 2) the hardware isn't stolen. Rig up a small power supply and find a way to light it up. Being able to drop that in front of an interviewer and e…

This reminds me of one of my coworkers who was interviewing around for his next job. One company he was interviewing for had a website with public facing user profiles. My coworker found a SQL injection vuln and wrote a POC virus that would spread to any other account that was logged in while viewing an infected profile and took it with him to his interview, gave them the code, and showed them how they could fix it. He said they were really thankful for the information, but as he was retelling the story to us later we all talked about how that could have gone very badly.

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

#223

Post by intellectronica »

existencebox wrote: post #99
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…

(Obvious disclaimer all views are my own and not my employer's) First, let me say that I don't disagree, pragmatically, with the truth of what you're saying, in terms of increasing your odds on the whole as a candidate. But that said, as another hiring manager, let me respectfully disagree with this as a strong hiring signal. I say this, to boot, as an engineer with an, in my experience, above average OSS contributio…

Didn't say that it's a hiring signal but rather that it's a filtering (get from application to being invited to interview) signal.

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

#224

Post by stakhanov »

galoisscobi wrote: post #216

This sounds like good advice. My current employer does not allow me to write technical blogs or have public git repos even if they’re unrelated to work and when done on my own time with my own resources. Sigh.

> My current employer does not allow me to write technical blogs or have public git repos even if they’re unrelated to work and when done on my own time with my own resources. Sigh.

That sounds like overreach; I don't think an employer is within his rights to try to restrict what you do in your free time with your own resources and without infringing on your employer's legitimate claims to IP (copyright, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, etc.)

This kind of overreach in contractual language and managerial posturing is somewhat common, driven by fears related to your exposure to your employer's IP, but the bark is worse than the legal bite here. I'm not a lawyer, but I still feel confident when saying that an employer wouldn't prevail in court, if they took legal action to enforce such restrictions on what you do outside of work.

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

#225

Post by never_inline »

_mh56 wrote: post #155

I have 50+ public projects on Github. Some of them are live, have screenshots, proper documentation and such. Some of them gets stars or people reach out for support on these projects. Some of them I've advertised on Reddit etc and reached 100K+ views and a lot of upvotes in their respective Communities. I also have a substack which has reached top of HackerNews once. All this has netted me exactly ZERO opportunities…

Brother you're from India? The market is much more tough and much more dumb here.

Due to competition, very few measures are competed upon very fiercely.

Whatever applies in west doesn't apply here.

I have had friends like you who did incredible projects and contributed to open source.

The best of my friends have ended up in relatively good startups due to open source and projects, after lot of struggle.

But on the other hand, I have seen absolutely incompetent morons who did Leetcode (or even cheated at it) and got a high life job.

Scale ruins things I guess. This market is pathetically fucked.

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

#226

Post by justinpombrio »

honzabe wrote: post #170
_sojh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I hear something like that from other Americans as well and do not doubt that what you are saying is true, but why is it like that? Isn't the unemployment rate in the US low (around 3.5%) right now? I live in a country where the unemployment rate is pretty low (2.5%) and the situation is kind of the reverse of what you are describing. Companies are trying to entice potential employees, not the other way around. Give…

> Isn't the unemployment rate in the US low (around 3.5%) right now?

Remember that the "unemployment rate" in the US is very particular. If you haven't searched for a job within the past 4 weeks then you're not unemployed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_Sta...

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

#227

Post by gavinhoward »

wiseowise wrote: post #53
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…

Standing out doesn't mean you'll get a job. Judging by your description and comment you certainly stand out, but is that enough to get a job? I can't tell unless I have an interview with you.

It's not enough to get a job, no.

I am not a good fit for companies, and I know it.

I was just refuting the article.

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

#228

Post by malcolmgreaves »

globular-toast wrote: post #119
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…

I don't see a contradiction. The article only talks about standing out from the crowd. You probably do. But in your case it probably causes people to not want to hire you.

Yeah you're 100% right. There's absolutely no contradiction. This guy's online presence does make him stand out. Unfortunately, in his own words, he isn't too great with following logical constructions (like code) written by others.

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

#229

Post by wonderwonder »

honzabe wrote: post #170
_sojh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I hear something like that from other Americans as well and do not doubt that what you are saying is true, but why is it like that? Isn't the unemployment rate in the US low (around 3.5%) right now? I live in a country where the unemployment rate is pretty low (2.5%) and the situation is kind of the reverse of what you are describing. Companies are trying to entice potential employees, not the other way around. Give…

Its very easy to fire people in the US, so there is likely considerable more stress involved in the US workers day to day as they don't know if they are going to be randomly let go tomorrow. US companies will often lay off hundreds of people to make the bottom line look better. We generally make good $ but it could all end tomorrow so we are always thinking of the next position. In addition, we get used to the money so while we could probably easily get a lower paying job if we have to, many of us [not al] also are not that great at financial planning in the US so the stress is maximized. On top of that our health insurance for our family is provided by our jobs.

So in the US its a perfect storm of stress and reliance on our jobs that can be taken away at any moment.

Writing this out, stressed me out :)

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

#230

Post by otoburb »

wiseowise wrote: post #120
dvt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course, this is also how people get around ageism (you're simply "not a good fit"). All in all, it still doesn't make it right.

> All in all, it still doesn't make it right. Sure it does. It may suck from a perspective of a candidate, but it’s a fair business position to value cohesion in a team.

>>Sure it does.

I can't comment on other jurisdictions, but the United States has a section of legislation called the Civil Rights Act Title VII[1] codifying that discrimination on the basis of a variety of factors (age included) is actually not (legally) right.

I think this is hard to enforce in practice, but just to be clear -- it's not (technically) "right" to be ageist in one's hiring practices in the US.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/centers-offices/civil-rig...

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