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The reverse job applicant

reversejobapplication.com

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Re: The reverse job applicant

#271

Post by pjscott »

Alex3917 wrote: post #262
brianbreslin wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean by violence? care to elaborate (and explain the correlation)?

The history taught in our schools is mostly a mix of propaganda and mythology, so there is nothing in our national identity that allows us to make sense of the 50 year decline that America is heading into. Consider that we now live in a society where: - It's basically impossible for most intelligent, hard working people to make a decent living. - Everyone is a criminal and is subject to arrest at any time. - The worl…

> Everyone is a criminal and is subject to arrest at any time.

That's hardly new. Remember when everyone from union organizers to groups of civil rights protesters could be arrested and charged with vagrancy? Probably not, because that was before you were born; the US courts cracked down on that sort of thing in the 60s and 70s. It may seem like America is getting crazy dystopian, but people in your parents' and grandparents' generations saw things that would make your hair curl.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#272

Post by Retric »

Kadrith wrote: post #238
Retric wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have helped plenty of people solve problems in languages I don't know. I would not suggest that this makes me an expert or even all that unusual. However, I suspect that a great C++ programmer would be more useful to a Python project than an average Python programmer in about 3 weeks.

Is the person who hires you willing to risk their reputation or job that a C++ programmer can do the job when there may be other Python programmers out there?

I have never gotten a job because I was a specialist in the specific language they wanted. From what I have seen the most important questions are can the program and will they flake out. After that it's just a question of how well they fit into the team.

PS: Outside of a tiny startup few people really risk much with any given new hire.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#273

Post by Locke1689 »

anthonyb wrote: post #234
randomtask wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know nothing of his situation and yet are willing to cast aspersions on his character. Before you go tarring a whole generation with the "entitled" label perhaps a little context from the generation that lacks humility might be in order. Friends of mine are in the same position as this guy. They recently graduated with good degrees from a decent university with no allusions that finding a job was going to be anyt…

Well, based on what I can see on the internet, it'd be a no-hire from me. His resume is pretty crappy: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf has nothing really concrete in terms of projects that he's worked on or code that he's written, libraries which he's used, just a bunch of HR waffle. He has one semi-completed project, http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ which might be enough to find him work as…

The magic numbers (what the hell is 22?) are also not a good sign.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#274

Post by noarchy »

Kadrith wrote: post #230
potatolicious wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society didn't lie to you, society never struck a bargain with you. Your parents may have lied to you, maybe your teachers too. Whoever it was that lied, it wasn't us . It probably wasn't malicious, some people are/were genuinely extremely misguided about how the world operates (protip: not as differently as before). Here's what happened: you abdicated your responsibility in one of the most important aspects of your…

Join Toast Masters. It is a public speaking and leadership organization; which looks great on resumes. Besides looking good on resumes it will help you learn how to think quickly on your feet in a conversation and be more comfortable with random conversations. http://www.toastmasters.org/ edit: It is also good for networking.

I was never in Toast Masters, but I'll definitely second the value of good speaking abilities. The problem, of course, is that you have to make it past the HR barrier, and land an interview to show those skills. But the HR barrier is less of an issue if you look at smaller companies, where they may not even have HR people getting in the way.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#275

Post by anthonyb »

Locke1689 wrote: post #273
anthonyb wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, based on what I can see on the internet, it'd be a no-hire from me. His resume is pretty crappy: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf has nothing really concrete in terms of projects that he's worked on or code that he's written, libraries which he's used, just a bunch of HR waffle. He has one semi-completed project, http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ which might be enough to find him work as…

The magic numbers (what the hell is 22?) are also not a good sign.

I'm pretty sure they're the width of the agent's image. So the ball is 19x19px, bullet is 11x11px and ... everything else is 45x45px. #OOfacepalm

Re: The reverse job applicant

#276

Post by noarchy »

The lack of completed projects in the last two years is a blinking red light. This just makes it look like an unexplained job gap. Two years is plenty of time to have done something, even if it was not paid work.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#277

Post by cheald »

phr wrote: post #178
danhak wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot explain how much you have hit the nail on the head. I graduated from college in May and have been having the exact experience you describe. My generation has been described as entitled. Quite frankly, I do feel as if I am owed something, and that society at large has failed to keep its end of the bargain. For my entire life, I was told that if I work hard in school, bust my ass to go to a good university and…

I have to agree that the higher-education bubble is just as cruel in its way as the real estate bubble was. Please don't let yourself rot away at your parents' house: work on open source projects, build a web app, do some on-your-own learning, etc.

A thousand times this. If you can't get someone to pay you to improve yourself, do it anyway. "I contributed significant patches to Major Open Source Project" sure as hell counts as experience to any hiring manager. Programmers have it damn easy compared to a lot of people - we don't have to be hired to get experience, and the barrier to entry to practicing our trade is non-existent. If you download a programming language installer and a text editor, you can get experience.

Find something you're passionate about, and work on it. For example, in the WoW community, there are a lot of people writing addons for the game. They don't have any appreciable economic value, they aren't world-changers, they aren't the Next Great Instant Millionaire idea, but I've personally seen dozens of people hired out of the community because of their hobby work (and I've gotten probably 6-8 job offers as a result of my similar work). As it turns out, there are Real World Problems to solve behind the shiny game veneer, and that counts for a lot.

It doesn't have to be a game. It can be a Javascript physics engine, or a database driver bugfix, or an experimental compression algorithm, or anything. Find something on GitHub you're interested in, take a look at the issues list, fork the repo, write tests, fix the issue, push your code, and issue a pull request back. Congrats, you're now a bit smarter and a bit more experienced. Repeat. In no time, you're going to have experience and perspective that will blow away the 98% of your hiring competition that you used to belong to.

Re: The reverse job applicant

#278

Post by wittgenstein »

I think the fact that this made it to the top of HN is unfortunate. This was precisely what the author of the reverse job application intended. Yet, creating a reverse job application web site clearly does not take any significant skill. It is not a ground-breaking idea, or an idea that a common job applicant cannot conceive. Yet, he is now claiming on his resume that his idea went to top of HN, which, ironically, will be viewed by some as a worthy achievement...

Re: The reverse job applicant

#279

Post by anamax »

pjscott wrote: post #267
anamax wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For my entire life, I was told that if I work hard in school, bust my ass to go to a good university and graduate with quantitative degree, I should have no trouble finding work. At best, that means that you have a beef with folks who told you that. However, you might want to think about why you believed them. Also, consider that they were trying to get you to buy into something for their benefit.

Do you really think that those people were giving that advice for selfish reasons? I'm guessing that they had good intentions, and honestly believed what they were saying.

> I'm guessing that they had good intentions

Everyone has good intentions.

> honestly believed what they were saying.

So what?

> Do you really think that those people were giving that advice for selfish reasons?

In many cases, yes. Sure, they also honestly thought that things would work for you, but that's the nature of "win-win".

Re: The reverse job applicant

#280

Post by scotty79 »

Don't look for a job. Look for task that someone wants to pay to be done. Do it. Get cash. Repeat with increased cash per unit of work until you will be able to pay other people to do some tasks.
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