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

simonwillison.net

281–290 of 396 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> our health insurance for our family is provided by our jobs I was not sure how this worked. I knew that the US does not have universal health care (not having it is one of those famous American things) but I assumed that it works on a private basis - you chose an insurance company if you want (and can afford) to be insured, you pay them $X per year and you are covered. Having this tied to your employment gives your…

Generally your employer provides you a fixed set of say 1 - 3 options, each better but more expensive than the prior. Our insurance policies generally also include a deductible, an amount you have to pay out of pocket before coverage kicks in. For example $3,000 per year. The higher the monthly premium, the lower the deductible. The employer pays ~50% - 70% of the premium and the employee pays the rest with pre tax money. The cost increases as you add children and spouse to your policy. Spouse is generally a higher premium bump than kids.

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

#282
post #255

I'm always surprised at how much push-back this one gets. The point I was trying to make here is that you DON'T need to be someone who spends every free moment blogging, writing open source code and so on. Stick up a few posts somewhere and leave them there, as a tiny piece of extra evidence that you're someone who knows how to do things. Maybe part of the problem is that I'm grossly under-estimating the amount of wo…

I appreciate the advice Simon! I don't think that you're under-estimating it, I think many (myself included) have a tendency to over-estimate it. I feel a decent amount of self-induced pressure for anything I think about writing to be really high quality - I see blogs like yours and the standard is set quite high! But I understand this is true of many creative activities: if you have good taste, then reaching the level of the work you admire is necessarily a lofty goal, and your early creative work is unlikely to meet it. But all of that is to say, the best course of action is still to Just Write. I hope I can take this advice to heart and start putting work out there! A 20-year blog begins with a single post :)

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

#283
post #255

I'm always surprised at how much push-back this one gets. The point I was trying to make here is that you DON'T need to be someone who spends every free moment blogging, writing open source code and so on. Stick up a few posts somewhere and leave them there, as a tiny piece of extra evidence that you're someone who knows how to do things. Maybe part of the problem is that I'm grossly under-estimating the amount of wo…

At least for me, I've never had my public projects, blog, youtube tutorials, stack overflow contributions etc referred to.

Generally it's been easy for me to get interviews, and hard to get offers (something like a 95% onsite rejection rate). I have enough experience and the resume items that gets recruiters excited about their next bonus. But it seems folks walk away saying "Yeah he's technical, but " ...

Oh well, I've also given up on caring.

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

#284
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'm on the fence here: sadly it does seem that grinding LC is an optimal use of time for the avg job seeker.

That said, not sure you can easily quantify projects as having no impact. Back when I was a seeker my resume had a handful of non-trivial public projects buried in a footnote and one would come up in about 75% of interviews. Despite bias I doubt this is too unique assuming the projs themselves are interesting.

Remember: your entire resume is adtech for your skills to a future employer. I'm of the belief that if human eyes ever skim it: project: Java CLI fizz buzz will never outperform project: RISC-V microkernel in Rust.

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

#285
> you don’t want to miss out on a great engineer just because they spent all of their energy making great products for prior employers rather than blogging, speaking and coding in public.

say it louder for the tone deaf recruiters and hiring managers in the back

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

#287

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…

> Make sure 1) the product has already been released to the public and 2) the hardware isn't stolen... don't give away anything proprietary Basically no one I've ever met was able to show me work from the giant corporation they worked for. But it's not because of NDAs. Indeed because of the nature of my business, those companies are my customers, we already all work together, I've signed NDAs, they are actually permi…

Hobby projects would work, no?

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

#288
post #239

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.

[dead]

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

#289
post #239

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.

Exactly, to me its reading like

“work life balance shouldn’t be penalized, going beyond will be rewarded. if you aren't interested in those benefits you should still be able to collect a paycheck at a static level, if you are it is accurate that you can get offers and counteroffers more easily”

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

#290

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 basically just did that and got the job. The interesting bit is that after the (many) interview(s) I talked to some guys and was told not to do that because it would be too unusual and would decrease my chances :shrug:
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