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Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
251–260 of 396 posts
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…
> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for…
You really think your experience works at scale? You're the product of hard work, smart decisions, awesome parents and something often forgotten - luck.
If you think for a minute your experiences can be translated and reproduced by the masses, you're kidding yourself.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…
> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for…
Same story here (parents came to the US with 3 kids (I was 9)) and struggled to support us (initially by being dishwashers at the local buffet).
I got a good college education and have a cushy software gig. Now I sit on my butt all day drinking LaCroix watching the checks come in. I sure as hell consider myself privileged.
Just because you started out lacking privilege, doesn't mean that you don't have it now.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
You left out 18 years in that story so it's hard to tell.
My entire direct family is on welfare and was half my life. My parents spent a significant amount of time in mental hospitals while I lived with various aunts and grandparents (sometimes trailers, sometimes in a farm house. I liked the farm house though). Yeah. Lots of privilege.
Living in a farm house sounds like privilege compared to trailers :)
Anyway, no need to defend yourself against random internet people.
In the end it’s all down to hard work and a bit of luck (the people not doing the hard work part will never be in a position to make use of the luck).
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#255This is the kind of advice that applies perfectly to groups of people but is terrible advice for individuals.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many people are hired through standard recruitment process and how many people are hired by impressed CEO?
I guess I'm a fan of the old adage: "Dress for the job you want."
Isn’t everyone always supposed to show up to an interview in a suit anyway?
I guess maybe that’s counterproductive for a job as garbageman, but...
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#257> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…
impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…
I have a few friends, really smart ones, that would do anything to have recruiters "annoying" them. And all of this just because they made an unfortunate choice somewhere in their past: they didn't choose STEM.
Everytime I ear people here bashing recruiters I feel the urge to shout: It's not about you it's STEM. Enjoy your prized ticket but be humble.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
My sister is a recruiter. I’ll be sure to tell her that you think she’s a bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator bottom-feeder. That’ll brighten up her day. And when she doesn’t take it to heart, I’ll be sure to add a ‘Let’s be frank...’.
Two things. First the "I know / am related to / am married to group" so you can't have a negative opinion about group thing is super cringe. I'm also pretty sure it's one of the logical fallacies. To put into perspective here is a rather extreme example: "My cousins an axe murderer, I'll be sure to tell him you think axe murders are bad, that'll brighten up his day". See how me saying I'm related to an axe murder doe…
I disagree. I think your analogy is flawed:
OP disparages people in my sister's line of work as "bottom-feeders", which is just a more euphemistic, if not cowardly, way of saying 'parasite', or 'scum'. My point is to draw attention to the decent people who work as recruiters (I'm implicitly holding my sister here as the archetype of a good person) and expose the original insult as unwarranted. An axe murderer is clearly someone who is indefensible, so could never be invoked as a positive example in argument with a statement like "Axe-murders are the worst people ever!"
Also, an 'axe murderer' is a caricature of a real murderer, used in comedy, horror films etc..., and not a honest counterexample to my sister.
But I digress..., thanks for the note on Totem Poles, I was unaware!
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#259> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…
As a hiring manager, I never cared about side projects, or Stack Overflow or Kaggle scores. The most a side project github link would tell me if it was big or not. That’s it. I’m not going to go through and read a bunch of random code by myself, when I can just ask a couple of questions, and get the same information quicker. They are just too many resumes to read. Seriously, all side projects tell me is that you spen…
I feel hiring managers enjoy talking about my side projects a lot more than about my boring day job.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I would split the issue raised in this post along two axes. The first is junior vs senior positions. For a junior position a half-baked github project or a little meetup presentation does wonders for you. At the senior level unless you did something incredible or highly relevant in your side-projects no one cares, it can even be a negative. The other is how are you getting the job. Are you sending in your resume…
That is very interesting, and would account for what I considered a mysterious experience of having a very hard time finding work this past year (while that had not remotely been an issue for me in the past). I've been doing freelance for a few years now, but when I was hired at two startups prior to that, in each case it was clear that my side projects were the driving factor. (The first time, it was an offer direct…
Obviously you know a great deal about your own situation than any internet commenter but perhaps you’re taking the wrong lesson from this?
Reading your story I would not be surprised if the problem was that the side projects strategy has topped out for the current level of impressiveness and publicity. I bet increasing either would improve results. If you look at Greg Kogan’s website[1] since he’s a consultant too there’s nothing about any impressive educational background. It’s all research and case studies. Blowing your own trumpet more, whether by speaking at meetups and conferences or creating digital artifacts that anyone can find on your website and then telling ten people who might be interested and might share might help. Both of these help more as they are performed more consistently, obviously.