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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

#231

Post by gavinhoward »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #214
gavinhoward wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this, by the way. But it's a good thing that companies find this out because I'm not a good fit for a sterile work environment. My original post was not asking why; it was refuting the article that said it was a good thing in its face.

The original post is titled "it doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate" Not that I necessarily agree with that, but how are you refuting it? The posts that make you stand out the most don't really demonstrate creativity, nor do they make you stand out in a positive way (to most employers; perhaps not to any employers, since you're so publicly opinionated on a variety of things that are la…

I know this.

The article had an implicit bent that standing out was good. When you're like me, it's not. That's what I was refuting.

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

#232

Post by melenaboija »

I love all these blog posts that will take you to the heaven of the $500K jobs with three easy steps.

It is hard, period. Otherwise everybody would be there, and if the advice works then you will have to find something else as in any other market, gaps close.

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

#233

Post by pcthrowaway »

gavinhoward wrote: post #218
skybrian wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at your blog, I think you're such a specialist that it's going to be hard to find a good fit. (For example, only being willing to write code in C.) Most people are more flexible.

Oh, I know. I never wondered why. I merely said that I can't get a job to refute the article.

You can get a job. You've made it clear that you know what you need to do to get a job (be more flexible with the language you'll work in, remove all non-technical opinions from your blog, and for the love of god stop carrying a fucking gun with you everywhere)

If you don't want to do the things that would qualify you for the available jobs, that's not because your technical posts wculdn't make you stand out, positively, it's because you're choosing not to!

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

#234

Post by simonw »

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…

I love that binder idea.

I've been meaning for years to put together a proper "projects" portfolio for my own site. I really like what Tom MacWright has for that https://macwright.com/projects/

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

#235

Post by _the_inflator »

melenaboija wrote: post #232

I love all these blog posts that will take you to the heaven of the $500K jobs with three easy steps. It is hard, period. Otherwise everybody would be there, and if the advice works then you will have to find something else as in any other market, gaps close.

I agree. Simply ask Gauss. ;)

Judging from my experience as business unit lead in an enterprise company, for every very high paying dev (VHPD) there is a mentor who supports this person. This is like in real life: no one promotes himself, you get pulled up.

Usually there is a specific business case behind VHPDs - and someone with technical prowess, to understand the need behind it. The line between ignorance and support is thin: "Why pay someone so much money? We can have 4 people for the same amount. 4 are better than 1!"

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

#236

Post by simonw »

_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…

I never said that having this stuff would get you the job offers. You still have to apply for the opportunities that are a good fit for you.

At least in the companies I've worked for in the UK and the US it should help you make it past the first filter - the "I have a stack of candidates, which of these are worth setting up an initial phone interview with" phase.

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

#237

Post by camhenlin »

_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…

I've held various roles over the years and personally believe that public contributions and innovative open source projects will often impress potential employers. Despite not coding much professionally anymore, I engage in fun personal open-source coding to maintain my skills. This strategy even played a part in securing my latest, predominantly non-coding role.

After reading your post, I reviewed your GitHub profile. You're certainly on the right track, but there's room for improvement. Here are my personal observations and opinions:

- You have numerous small projects, but they lack detailed descriptions and the README files don't tell me much about their purpose. Why are you building these? How can they be run? What functionality do they offer?

- Many projects have minimal activity, suggesting they might be incomplete or abandoned.

- There are several boilerplate projects like "calculator", "todo", and "tutorial".

- Your commit messages in most repos are quite short, often just one or two words. This practice might not be accepted in a professional team setting. I've been guilty of this with my personal projects at times too.

- Your project https://github.com/prakhar897/workaround-gpt shows promise in terms of community interest and the start of what could be a well-constructed README. Perhaps you should consider continuing with this project or developing a similar, well-structured project. Just a thought.

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

#238

Post by simonw »

_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…

> Now, we need to be spending all of our time off, which if you work for a startup isn’t as much as you’d think, developing a blog

If you read my post, you'll see that I'm not advocating for that. I'm suggesting the bare minimum: "Start a blog. Post an interesting technical article to it once or twice a year—something you’ve learned, or a bug you’ve fixed, or a problem you’ve solved. After a few years stop bothering entirely, but leave the blog online somewhere."

The point of my piece is that you don't need to dedicate huge amounts of effort to doing this kind of work. Do a little bit, stick it online somewhere and it will still give you a huge benefit compared to other candidates who don't have any public evidence of their work.

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

#239

Post by loeg »

melenaboija wrote: post #232

I love all these blog posts that will take you to the heaven of the $500K jobs with three easy steps. It is hard, period. Otherwise everybody would be there, and if the advice works then you will have to find something else as in any other market, gaps close.

The article doesn't promise a $500k job, just that public portfolios stand out vs candidates without a portfolio. I don't think it's an especially exotic or unbelievable claim.

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

#240

Post by barrenko »

melenaboija wrote: post #232

I love all these blog posts that will take you to the heaven of the $500K jobs with three easy steps. It is hard, period. Otherwise everybody would be there, and if the advice works then you will have to find something else as in any other market, gaps close.

If you're in, you're probably lucky. Probably skilled, but lucky for sure.
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