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Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

manuel.darcemont.fr

361–370 of 396 posts

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#361
post #28

> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…

impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…

Can we please stop assuming we know someone's life story based on one comment they write on HN?

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#362
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vocodes is super cool and fun to play with, well done. I wonder if it's possible to turn it into a text-to-speech donations service for Twitch streamers? The current TTS voices are rather monotone. Some donators test how their text donations would sound like on this website: https://textreader.pro P/S: Small typo on the first sentence on the about page.

Thanks! That's an awesome idea I hadn't thought of. Is there anybody in particular I should reach out to? And thanks for the bug report too :)

Hmm, I'm not sure. On second thought, it could be a legal copyright issue to use famous voices in a monetary setting. Also, it could perhaps be abused somehow despite its huge entertainment potential.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#363
post #28

> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…

Oh major cultural misunderstanding here. Assuming he's in France, by "recruiter" he means company recruiters / HR. Your CV and first phone interview always go to a recruiter at the company, that's the first person you have to talk to (and impress) to have a shot at any job. American might understand recruiter as an external agency, there's no such thing in tech in France. There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting i…

"There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting idle out of sight collecting money never interacting with the company or any employee." -> Could you elaborate this, please?

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#364
post #28

> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…

I think the author used the term recruiter to mean "person who is recruiting" - so I think your comment is sort of agreeing with the OP.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#365

The creator of homebrew flunked a Google interview because he couldn't invert a binary tree. Everyone at Google that he interviewed said they used homebrew and loved it, but ultimately it didn't matter. He couldn't invert a binary tree. So side projects or even real projects that are used by millions are literally meaningless. Study LeetCode instead to get a job and focus on your job at work.

It's like a little puzzle snack type of a thing that I've certainly never been lucky enough to need to solve in 15 years of programming yet.

Yes, I think it's really limited in utility. But it can offer some insight into how quick and flexible you are generally speaking.

My first impression is you can do a quick DFS recursive function that does a swap (can prolly use xor operator) on the left & right pointers

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. You don't need to know them personally. Most companies (small companies at least) post job advertisements on their website and you can apply via email or a simple application form that goes directly to the hiring manager. I managed to get my first dev job with zero professional experience (and I mean zero, I'd literally never worked any job before), zero "ne…

What year was it? I don't imagine a CV fresh out of high school passing a first HR filter in the current decade.

2012. I had been coding for ~5 years at that point, so I had a fair bit of coding experience. Just none of it was professional experience. I made a CV that went over my actual coding experience and skills in details, then I applied to small companies (<40 people). Many of those don't have much in the way of HR and have hiring managers dealing with CVs directly.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#367
post #28

> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…

impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…

Calling people privileged reminds me a lot of a different social strata saying 'I'm not racist but...'

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry to hear that. This speaks to the generally lower moral behavior of our society today. It develops gross incompetency in ability to deal with unique human physiologies. Ideally people are able to work with each other’s upmost abilities rather than view people as a threat to their own job security and career progression. :(

> This speaks to the generally lower moral behavior of our society today. Lol of course disadvantaged minorities were treated far better in the olden days. /s

Sir, I recommend you look into the history of Charles Steinmetz, for instance. And your generalization of minorities effectively evacuates its meaning - technically we are all minorities by your reasoning; or rather your lack of it.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh major cultural misunderstanding here. Assuming he's in France, by "recruiter" he means company recruiters / HR. Your CV and first phone interview always go to a recruiter at the company, that's the first person you have to talk to (and impress) to have a shot at any job. American might understand recruiter as an external agency, there's no such thing in tech in France. There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting i…

"There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting idle out of sight collecting money never interacting with the company or any employee." -> Could you elaborate this, please?

In the US startup world, CEO/CTO are those who built the company from scratch up, growing the company and selecting the first hundred employees up to where it is today (billions of dollars with unicorns). It's a symbol, in many ways, more than can be described in a sentence.

In large US companies, they're more a public figure and who negotiate large contracts in person and send regular emails to employees telling them they are the greatest company and the greatest employees in the world.

In French companies. CEO/CTO are basically absent, they don't exist and don't send any communication. You can ask some French workers who are the executives of their company and they probably have no idea. The startup scene being pretty weak with no unicorn, there isn't any example you could quote either, there isn't a French Zuckerberg or Elon.

If you wonder who's there for real, there's a bunch of rich folks who sponsor one another to board and executive seats of the 100 largest companies and that's about it.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting idle out of sight collecting money never interacting with the company or any employee." -> Could you elaborate this, please?

In the US startup world, CEO/CTO are those who built the company from scratch up, growing the company and selecting the first hundred employees up to where it is today (billions of dollars with unicorns). It's a symbol, in many ways, more than can be described in a sentence. In large US companies, they're more a public figure and who negotiate large contracts in person and send regular emails to employees telling the…

Interesting....

I just want to say there is at least one unicorn in France, BlaBlaCar. Granted, it's not as big as FB. But unicorn nevertheless.

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