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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

#311

Post by rconti »

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…

I don't think there's anything wrong with your suggestions; I think they absolutely will be minimal effort for a huge payoff for a job seeker.

Here are the struggles I've had with this over my career:

* Public vs private persona. I'm a pretty open person and happy to share with people I know or where it feels "safe" (eg, Facebook where I more explicitly control the audience) but I'm deeply uncomfortable with publicly announcing things under my name on the internet to go god-knows-where. This is one reason I've been tremendously uncomfortable with Twitter. I absolutely despise the public-broadcast model, and I'm somewhat suspicious of people who want to make such a show of themselves (to build an "audience"). I've toyed with various forms of pseudonymity but that brings its own problems; I think it encourages antisocial behaviors and then at some people you have to 'expose' yourself (eg, when you have to tell your prospective employer, yes, NSAhacker31337 is my github, take a look!)

* Along with the above, blogging/demonstrating things always has a bit of a show-off feel. "Look at this great thing I know how to do, I bet you don't know how to do it!" Or, worse, you're demonstrating something "everybody knows" and you look like a naive fool.

* Consistency. I've made various "I should start a blog" efforts over the years, and inevitably get bored of the tools and want it somewhere else, or I don't like the tone I used to use, or I forget which site I used, or whatever. It's sort of like how "just go to the gym 3 days a week" shouldn't be that hard, but for 99% of people is.

Again, these are just my personal struggles, to maybe help you understand why people don't. It's nothing against your advice, which I think is fantastic.

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

#312

Post by mihaic »

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…

I think what you're missing is an explanation on why there should be any correlation between being a good developer/employee with writing a blog. Sure, you can say communication skills, but you want to test for that anyway.

I actually think that we'd have a much better job market without any of this.

I'm also among the people that see too much pointless content being published simply for hidden advertising, including by companies.

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

#313

Post by FrustratedMonky »

WJW wrote: post #141
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…

America is such a wild place lol. How dangerous can a Rust conference really be?

LOL. I know Rust programmers can be passionate. But this juxtaposition of Gun Violence and Programming strikes a funny chord.

Can just imagine a Rust conference, and an argument breaks out over memory management, one guy starts yelling about 'borrowing', starts shooting, someone else yells "you can take my pointers out of my dead cold hands", starts shooting. Pandemonium.

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

#314

Post by pc86 »

g4zj wrote: post #304
fho wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:

Being unusual seems important for standing out of the crowd of applicants.

The trick is being unusual enough to stand out initially but not so much that it's questioned at later steps whether or not you'll be able to fit in, work on the existing team, etc.

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

#315

Post by JadeNB »

kyleyeats wrote: post #292
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.

> 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.

I know I'm coming at this from the idealistic position of someone who's lucky enough to have a job, but isn't it kind of a good thing if you find out early that you're applying to a company where doing things is a red flag?

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

#316

Post by doctorpangloss »

temp51723 wrote: post #291
doctorpangloss wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's your prerogative. Nobody said anything about "exfiltrating." Showing someone X doesn't mean that X isn't owned by its owner anymore. These aren't semantic arguments.

You're going to have a hard time expressing what exactly is the violation when everyone has signed the same NDAs and CIIAs! Like if you work for Google, and I work for Google, you can fathom, well I can look at code you've written for Google.

Okay, now if I only "work" for Google, which like 200,000 people do, and they've signed the same exact agreements as you... It's your prerogative!

> criminally or civilly

It's your prerogative! You can leetcode instead!

I am not saying this is you. But there are many developers, arguably the majority, who complain tirelessly about the status quo of interviewing. And given one opportunity after another to change that status quo - doing the stuff Simon says, doing the stuff I am saying - they make no effort! They vamp about how it's impossible.

They think their social local mobile trip planning startup website code is sensitive. They think their 15 layers of Dagger dependency injections is sensitive. It's not. If you want to change the status quo from leetcoding, you're going to have to screen share a "diff" here or there, and show people concretely what the hell you've been doing for a year at BigCo or UnicornCo. I cannot predict the future and I cannot generalize, but in my experience, the likelihood of criminal, civil or even the far more realistic reputational and cultural repurcussion is extremely small.

All I am saying is, the reason this hasn't happened yet is because most people spend a year at BigCo and UnicornCo doing nothing of any substance. I mean maybe that's going to change. But it's really tough, nobody is being honest with how truly tremendously mismanaged and ZIRP-fueled large employers are. It hasn't been this way forever, but it has for at least 10 years, and it means some crazy things have happened in the job market that made no sense.

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

#317

Post by digitalsushi »

fho wrote: post #290
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 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:

i'd tell you not to do that so that when i steal it from you, i'm also not competing against you

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

#318

Post by asynchronous »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #122
okeuro49 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your blog post: > Got another programming job. Got fired for "performance." I think the reason wasn’t good, but I also have a hard time building a theory of mind, which means I can’t read code written by others. If you can't read code written by others, that's going to be a big concern for companies that require you to read and modify other people's code. Perhaps you need to be a contractor, not an employee.

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…

[flagged]

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

#319

Post by simonw »

mihaic wrote: post #312
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…

I think what you're missing is an explanation on why there should be any correlation between being a good developer/employee with writing a blog. Sure, you can say communication skills, but you want to test for that anyway. I actually think that we'd have a much better job market without any of this. I'm also among the people that see too much pointless content being published simply for hidden advertising, including…

I don't think there's a correlation between writing a blog and being a good developer.

I think there's a small correlation between "having a tiny bit of evidence online that you're capable of solving problems" and "getting invited to an in-person interview" - at least given my own experience at the companies that I've worked at (and hired for).

That said, I do think there's a strong correlation between being good at written communication and being a great senior / staff-level engineer.

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

#320

Post by asynchronous »

themoonisachees wrote: post #197
czechdeveloper wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say that that part in Rust Trademark Policy also gave me a stop. It's just so weird to single it out.

It's good PR CYA. They ensure that there will be a much lower chance of an article headlined "mass shooting at rust conference" being written. I am personal'y of the opinion that brands play it too safe in general and people aren't stupid and know that just because a brand happened to be near something bad doesn't mean the brand is responsible and therefore bad, but apparently brands don't agree and they're the ones…

Oh of all the logic to use, you literally get it backwards by saying gun-free zones are mass-shooting free zones.

HN never change please.

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