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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

#291

Post by temp51723 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #265
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…

> 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…

> It's because they didn't do anything. NDA = Not Doing Anything.

No, it's because it's my employers code, not mine.

God knows what trying to exfiltrate it opens me up to criminally or civilly.

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

#292

Post by kyleyeats »

simonw wrote: 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…

My take on the problem: You're projecting yourself onto other people who are looking at candidates. This stuff matters to you but not to most people hiring. The corporate apparatus tends to view these things as a challenge to The Way We Do Things Here, so a blog post or side project might even be a red flag. This strategy is a gigantic waste of time. It shouldn't be but it is.

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

#293

Post by ativzzz »

BeetleB wrote: post #264
pcthrowaway wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes! https://gavinhoward.com/2023/04/rust-is-dead-to-me/ > Rust the language is dead to me. > why? > Because, quite literally, the Rust Foundation wants to make people like me unwelcome in any Rust event, not just official ones. > Don’t believe me? > Look at the draft Rust Trademark Policy that the Rust Foundation is asking for comments on and go to page 12: > > We will consider requests to use the Marks on a case…

Eh. Nothing that you quoted would concern me about this person. I am anti-gun and vote that way, but I am mature enough to see the other side's perspective. If a person says he refuses to use Rust because because they prohibit firearms, then as a person I would find it quite understandable, and as an interviewer I would bring it up in the interview to point out that he'll have to work with whatever tech stack we use,…

> Frankly, I think if people won't hire because of a post like this, then the interviewers are the one contributing to the problem.

Totally disagree. For the vast majority of software dev jobs (like 98% of them), you just want someone who shows up and does the work without making much of a fuss. People who openly demonstrate that they are difficult to work with are freely signaling "do not hire me, I will make your life much harder"

Why would you hire someone like that? You'd much rather have someone who is 50% as skilled but gets along with everyone and doesn't make other's lives harder because of their personality

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

#294

Post by gavinhoward »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #233
gavinhoward wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, positiv…

I'm already infamous for my personal opinions in the tech world. Will removing he personal posts and putting them on a separate blog really work? (I do already have a domain.)

I'm not so sure it would work. By the time I thought about it, I had already gone viral on HN and the personal attacks had started.

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

#295

Post by alain94040 »

I’ve spent nearly twenty years blogging, giving talks and releasing open source code. [...] I’ve interviewed hundreds of people [...] The vast majority of candidates have little to no evidence of creativity in public at all

Are we sure the author is not showing some unconscious bias by looking in others for traits he has (public creativity)?

There is no particular reason why public creativity is linked to good engineers. It's one way to show good engineering, sure. But far from the only way. I could see some other hiring managers arguing the opposite: if you have time to write lightweight tech posts on your blogs, maybe you are not a great engineer who will solve my company's most difficult problems.

That being said, especially for new grads, I strongly recommend showing something, anything beyond "I graduated from this university and here are the classes I took".

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

#296

Post by gavinhoward »

leovander wrote: post #18
gavinhoward wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be any part. Usually, the problem is that companies find out that I'm not good as a cog in a machine. That can happen at any time, but once they do, they're not interested.

Sorry for not looking at your credentials, do you have enough experience to potential land staff+ roles? Would still be a cog but maybe a bit more breathing room depending on the type of role you apply for. https://staffeng.com/book has a list of different types of staff+ roles that could maybe fit.

I don't think I have enough work experience. But thank you for the link.

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

#297

Post by CharlieDigital »

simonw wrote: 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…

One of the best ways for me to understand a candidate in an interview process OR a prospective lead that I'm reporting to (be it CEO, CTO, VPE) if I'm on the other end is to see how they think and how they interact with a community.

Whether that's through a blog, through their socials, LinkedIn posts, through their YouTube, through their GitHub - I review all of it; anything I can find. I want to see how they communicate, how they think, how they comment their code (or don't), their view points on various touchy subjects in software engineering and system design.

It's basic background research. Why suffer through a relationship that isn't going to work out for either party if some basic digging can short circuit that problem? It also provides great context for an interview and points of discussion that help connect with the other party.

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

#298

Post by porcupinepig »

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…

[dead]

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

#299

Post by gavinhoward »

BeetleB wrote: post #259
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…

> It demonstrates careful work with every function documented in Doxygen comments and a development manual entirely designed to raise the bus factor to infinity. In my experience, not a single employer cares about documentation.

And that's probably one of the many reasons I can't get a job: I'm too careful.

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

#300

Post by gavinhoward »

loeg wrote: post #247
gavinhoward wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't what "refute" means! Your situation does not contradict the article's claim. It's orthogonal.

Well, not exactly. The article had an implicit bent that standing out is a good thing. That's what I'm refuting.
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