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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

#331

Post by rhtgrg »

dmoy wrote: post #324
doctorpangloss wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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. wait how does that work in the context of an interview though? You're by definition interviewing somewhere where you don't currently work > 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 can…

Yeah this reads like satire. I hope it is, anyway.

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

#332

Post by sanderjd »

rconti wrote: post #311
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…

Wow, nailed it. This is exactly how I feel.

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

#333

Post by not_the_fda »

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 do something similar. I have a binder of product brochures for every product I have built. Its worked very effectively and is more engaging than just talking about some tech, you can point to an actual product and show how it all works.

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

#334

Post by intellectronica »

simonw wrote: post #238
_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…

> Now, we need to be spending all of our time off, which if you work for a startup isn’t as much as you’d think, developing a blog If you read my post, you'll see that I'm not advocating for that. I'm suggesting the bare minimum: "Start a blog. Post an interesting technical article to it once or twice a year—something you’ve learned, or a bug you’ve fixed, or a problem you’ve solved. After a few years stop bothering…

I think what can be confusing to people who receive this advice at a time when they are already searching for a job, is that this is potentially a bit too late. If you publish something once or twice a year (like you suggest in the post) it all adds up and in a few years you have a body of work to present. If you're applying for a job next week there's not much you can do in this one week (although I've seen some exceptions to that too, where people did something cool and heroic in a few days to draw attention to what they have to offer before or while going for a job).

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

#335

Post by easytiger »

Alternatively I see people publishing their "creativity" as virtue signalling nothingness.

I did a freelance job for someone and they asked to see a portfolio.

I said I can't even divulge the nature of the projects I did for various banks let alone send you screenshots of it because me having screenshots would indicate a breach of contract.

Ask me anything about the tech you want to implement.

I got the gig.

I've also seen "vibes" hiring of people with a good rep in various communities and it doesn't work. Those people are generally awful to work with and lack any desire to compromise

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

#336

Post by sanderjd »

richiebful1 wrote: post #301
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 generally agree. The public presence that's given me a lot of positive attention is: 1. Having a custom domain 2. Using that custom domain for email 3. Have your custom domain point to a professional-looking page. Maybe link to a resume/other things. I've had a surprising number of interesting interactions just because someone saw my email and went to my website. Some yielded job leads and eventual referrals to job…

Do you think the TLD matters? I see you have a .com, but I can never find any plausible .coms available for my name. Do you think people care about this? Does stuff like .me and .io seem unprofessional somehow for this "cool, they have a custom email domain, let's go see what's on it" workflow?

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

#337

Post by BeetleB »

ativzzz wrote: post #293
BeetleB wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> 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.

For the vast majority of people who post stuff like that on their blog, they show up and do the work without making much of a fuss.

I know because I've worked with several of them.

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

#338

Post by drngdds »

Maintaining an employer-friendly public persona seems pretty miserable if you like sharing opinions more controversial than programming language preferences. Or if your hobbyist tech interests skew in the anti-corporate or copyright-infringement-y directions.

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

#339

Post by BeetleB »

moneywoes wrote: post #280
BeetleB wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tip: Work for an established company - preferably a non-Internet oriented one. Perhaps a traditional engineering company (you know, the type that actually manufactures something physical). Definitely not a startup. Or one that is not in tech (e.g. bank, hospital, etc). They typically will not work you that hard, and no one checks your blog or Github. Of course, there are downsides to this approach as well...

How do you filter for these companies in the job search process? I saw one and they copied Amazon to a T ( doesn’t help the exec team was lifted from there) with attrition quotas, heavy on calls tight deadlines etc

> How do you filter for these companies in the job search process?

As sister comment said, look at Fortune 500 companies. In the top 10, only 3 are tech companies.

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

#340

Post by john-tells-all »

BossingAround wrote: post #11

When I applied recently to a new job, the interviewer(s) didn't even look at my github profile (or if they did, they might have clicked on one repo for 5s, and left). I know this based on the questions they asked me. Unless you highly curate your online presence for the hiring people (e.g. your blog only contains articles of interest to the interviewers in one place), I think nobody cares. The exception being is if y…

I strongly recommend creating a GitHub Profile README and spending some time on it, and get others to review it. Imagine the interviewer will skim it for 10 seconds before your interview -- your personal README matters! They are unusual so you'll stand out.

On mine I list three attributes that make me a great, and unique, worker for the jobs I'm looking for. Go ahead and be grandiose here -- the point is to start a conversation!

https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/setting-up-an...

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