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My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

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Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#371

Post by scarface74 »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #356
suyash wrote: post #12

One Page resume was still the style in 1980, that's cool. Really well written cover letter as well, hard to see that come by these days.

I tried cutting my resume down to one page. I received virtually no callbacks, because I'm perceived as inexperienced. (OR: the shotgun approach to getting past resume filters is a real thing). So then, I exhaustively detailed every past project on my resume. At every interview: it's excruciatingly clear, nobody read the fucking thing. Junior engineers who I interview, know this: Even if my boss hands me your resume…

I have never done the shotgun approach. I always go through local recruiters.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#372

Post by lev99 »

indigodaddy wrote: post #206
lev99 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get every job you ask for maybe you are aiming too low.

Or maybe he or she just chooses well and is that good.

Maybe, it really would require a lot of research to determine if one of the two purposed situations are correct.

I wrote my comment to inspire people to look at jobs they normally wouldn't, because I believe applying for a wide range of jobs is a good strategy for learning about the labor market.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#373

Post by exikyut »

Latteland wrote: post #363
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wow, I wish I was an engineer in that era. 25 years at the same company, 3 languages over 13 years. I work for a competitor to General Dynamics in practically the same field (as close as you can get in 2018) as Mr. Ray Livesay. Counting the acquisition, I've been with the same company for 11 years, having worked my way up from being a technical writer to programmer to systems engineer. When I wanted to transition fr…

Google/Microsoft/amazon/facebook/other big top companies seem to only have people work in group settings, but the problem is they pay a metric shitload of money. I've worked for several of them on this list. Work at one of those for 10 years and you might be fixed for life. I also used to work at Microsoft back when we all had private offices but I was lucky enough to be there when the stock was steadily appreciating…

I wish I knew. Looking at this user's post history (only two pages) it appears to be defence-aviation related.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#374

Post by exikyut »

ak39 wrote: post #45
khazhou wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! The trashcan is usually full of crumpled-up failed attempts. But the smell of typewriter ink. Man, I miss it.

But it's more than the romance of the ink that is missed. One has lost the visual impact of all discards with the use of the virtual trashcan. The psychology of seeing or the stark visual impact of a trashcan filled to the brim with all the imperfect and therefore discarded attempts of one's creative effort is lost - almost forever. These were the metrics of effort now untenable in the virtual trashcan. Gone. Who kno…

Hopefully you get to enjoy VR/AR at some point. You could build a widget that connects your git repos to visualizations of filing cabinets, and your Recycle Bin to a visualization of your room being full to the ceiling with crumpled documents.

For bonus points, find a generic document preview library (a la macOS Preview), render images of everything in the Recycle Bin, and use these as the textures for all the crumpled bits of paper. And use a procedural physically-based renderer to make all the crumples move as you walk around the room!

Potentially also make all the videos in the Recycle Bin play on the crumples.

I'm completely serious; this will exist eventually. You might as well make it, you have the romantic motivation for it.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#376

Post by zdragnar »

YZF wrote: post #333
zdragnar wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person who sent in the MS word doc was a CS/Engineering graduate with significant experience in respectable companies? Hard to believe. This is a bit of a fun story to tell in person; this was the same person who claimed to be the second coming of Christ, and tried suing us for religious discrimination when we didn't hire him. Fortunately for us, the people in the interview didn't respond to his claims at all,…

Companies who treat potential candidates unfairly eventually tarnish their reputation. You don't design your process for the single outlier crazy person and then treat everyone like they are potentially crazy or liars. You treat everyone with respect, that's how you build a reputation. Respect includes respect for their time amongst other aspects. Presumably this is partly why hiring is expensive. Not that I'm sure i…

Firing a bad hire can be just as or more expensive than hiring them in the first place.

I agree with your overall points- especially with regard to respecting your candidates time. You do need to verify that the relevant information they provide is correct however. You wouldn't make a significant investment in finances, buying a car, marrying someone, or go into business with someone if you didn't trust that you have a decent understanding of what you're getting into.

Then again, if you do, it's a lesson you'll learn rather quickly. Respect yes, blind trust no.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#377

Post by et2o »

pietro wrote: post #216
et2o wrote: post #202

Did he have to draw the underlines with a ruler and pen?

Typewriters let you backspace _over_ what was already there, so we just typed the word, used backspace to get the beginning of the word, and then typed underscores until the word was effectively underlined. In fact, you could double underline a word by moving half a line down (that was a thing) and then create the underline with equal signs.

Interesting, thanks for enlightening me. I have never actually used a typewriter. I wonder if they will ever make a comeback a la record players.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#378

Post by zerr »

dang wrote: post #314
zerr wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that sounds strange to me - the family of two generations programmers can't afford in-house nursing? I can't imagine putting my parents or grannies in "home" unless I am really poor.

I realize there's no mechanism in the text box that prevents people from posting to HN like this, but can you please restrain yourself? What a horrible position you put the other person in, to have to defend their most intimate family situation in public or else leave a gossipy slur like this unanswered. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but that's the form it congeals into once you post it. Users need to do bett…

I agree. If possible, feel free to delete this subthread.

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#379

Post by chrisco255 »

adventured wrote: post #287
metaphor wrote: post #55

If I lived through 3 wars and had a strong career alignment with major defense contractors, I suppose I'd be inclined to disclose health and height out of habit...but was this generally expected on a resume back in the 80s?

Here's the resume of Bill Gates from 1973 (lists height and weight) - https://i.imgur.com/btFE99N.jpg And Paul Allen's - https://i.imgur.com/0pDSVBS.jpg

Great find! Imagine getting that kind of talent for a mere $15K a year! $15K in 1974 roughly translates to ~$77K today. Not too shabby. Balling since Freshman year.

Also looked up the cost of Harvard tuition in those days: $5,350 (about $27.5K in 2018 dollars)[https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1974/3/5/faculty-announce...]

I guess even programmer salaries haven't kept up with the cost increase in higher education...

Re: My dad’s resume and skills from 1980

#380

Post by GlennS »

phyller wrote: post #327
tannhaeuser wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baby-sitting Java devs as "senior" atm. They don't know much, but what little they know they're defending with fervor, like "REST", Spring crap, and rubbish pseudo-modularization using "microservices". Worst, taking random architecture astronaut blog posts as dogma, incapable of reflecting whether something makes sense for a given task ("SQL is too old-school and low-level (!)"). Makes you really think about what…

I think the root issue is that there is just simply too much to know and too little time to know it. Everything is completely reinvented every 3 years now it seems, so many of the successful young engineers I know tend to develop a herd mentality, just do what everyone else is doing. You don't need to understand it, just pick your favorite thought leaders, emulate them, and things will usually work out well enough.

I think it's OK not to know the best tools. There's a lot of things out there, a lot of the best ones take some time to learn, and bad ones can ride a marketting wave to stay popular for a good few years.

It's also understandable that once people find a tool which they like enough to sink some time into learning properly, that they then cling to it a bit.

But I'm inclined to think that anyone who chose Spring for that position either has pretty bad taste, or simply hasn't bothered to look at a second tool.

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