Is this satire?
Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
371–380 of 396 posts
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#372Every time this topic comes up on HN I feel like the only person who does side projects because I enjoy them as a hobby. Learning for the job is distantly secondary, and getting my next job is tertiary. They're perks to something I'm doing anyway, not justifications for doing it. Yeah, I program at work, but the tasks I get at a software job don't scratch the itch that got me into tech in the first place. Just like h…
The problem for me comes down to screen time. I spend so much screen time at work programming that I don't think it's healthy to do the same thing as a hobby.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for…
You really think your experience works at scale? You're the product of hard work, smart decisions, awesome parents and something often forgotten - luck. If you think for a minute your experiences can be translated and reproduced by the masses, you're kidding yourself.
He/she/it's right. I tried:
https://adequate.life
It doesn't work. Too many variables in life to capture all of them.
I'm imagining 20 years from now someone making IntervieweeBot, who will pass all the tests and STILL not get the job because the interviewer didn't like that indignant look in the robot's eye. Or MLHire, a machine-learning algorithm that reliably fails to predict what the employee will want to be doing at the end of their contract. It will make millions in a Series A, become hugely popular, then promptly forgotten after [Elon Musk-like in 20 years] fails to deliver.
EDIT: 80% chance of male pronoun considering the industry, but wasn't sure.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#374that's interesting to me, cause the complete opposite worked out for me well. I treated 9-5 work as a necessity to put food on the table and pay for rent(I always tried to find a comfy job where I can put in a few hours/day max and survive), and my side projects as the possible real money makers. And it worked out very well for me - have been able to achieve my main goals in less than 10 years since graduating.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#375> 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 feel like this is one of those moments that shouts “Hacker News is not typical”. A lot of people are employed through recruiters, including for Facebook, Google and the rest! Aiming to impress the CEO is all very well, but it’s not common.
Being in tech, I am friends/acquaintances with several people that work for both Google and Facebook. I also interviewed with both. In both cases, it was because an in house recruiter reached out to me on linkedin, not because I had some inside connection.
At the start up I interned at during the beginning of my career, I got the interview and the job because I knew one of the developers. Every other job has been bog standard: apply , talk to recruiter, do phone screen, do onsite.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going to throw a bit of shade here, but there's a lot of irony in thinking that "hiking" is some exciting hobby while denigrating people building stuff in their spare time.
I don't think he is denigrating it. He probably phrased it badly, but he meant you did side projects like a hobby just as well you might have done hiking in that time.
I read it the same way. Hiking is a stereotypical hobby along with playing an instrument.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#377If you have made it to the stage of talking to a recruiter, haven't you already passed that hurdle? My experience is the recruiter talks to you to tell you more about the company, the job, and to explain the hiring process, not to evaluate you.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
^ Same. The last time I was out of work my wife was asking why I wasn't pounding the pavement sending out tons of cover letters and resumes and the like. I told her that in the 21 years I've been working, I've not gotten a single job via that route. It's always been networking. At some point about 10-15 years ago I just stopped even bothering with a resume at all. If I can't get in front of a decision maker, I don't…
What kind of companies are they? Small companies with less than 100 people? I've never seen any medium-large company where any single person was able to take a decision. Large companies cut all hiring power from their middle managers, forcing to interview with a whole panel, this prevents manager from favoring friends and building a fiefdom.
Indeed, small companies. I don't have the right pedigree to make it through hiring hurdles at big companies. Despite industry name recognition and 11 years of experience I get filtered out because I never went to college. HR / People Ops / Recruiters tend to not know enough about the technical roles they are hiring for to gauge skill, so they go the lazy route and use college degrees or BigCo work history as a proxy. If you don't have a degree you can't get BigCo, so you fail on both fronts. Department heads and small company founders can tell if you know your stuff or not with a simple conversation. So that's what I've optimized for when looking for work. Routes to those people and around normal hiring filters.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#379You weren’t wrong. You gave up too early, accepting the salaryman fantasy of steady growth if you just “work hard.” If this works past 50, you are 80th percentile. Past 55? 98th percentile. How will you feel when you begin to be handed boring, or fix-it projects? When your salary doesn’t keep up with 29-year-old versions of yourself? Layoffs? Perfectly acceptable or ignorable at 20-38. Lethal >48. You need to own the…
Interesting comment. How do you capture value if I may ask? This article https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/dont-hinge-your-care... Uses Nikola Tesla ad an expample of not depending on your technical skills alone
You are thick! (I’m not trying to insult you!)
You capture value by OWNING shit! That’s a syllogism.
Sorry that I used “corporate” words when I was suggesting the opposite.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#380You weren’t wrong. You gave up too early, accepting the salaryman fantasy of steady growth if you just “work hard.” If this works past 50, you are 80th percentile. Past 55? 98th percentile. How will you feel when you begin to be handed boring, or fix-it projects? When your salary doesn’t keep up with 29-year-old versions of yourself? Layoffs? Perfectly acceptable or ignorable at 20-38. Lethal >48. You need to own the…
> Past 55? 98th percentile Reference? Are you implying that developers over 55 are unemployed against their choice? I suspect sampling bias: Any half competent 55 year old has lived through some golden opportunities to make bank, or decide on a career change by choice. Also the intake cohorts results in not many over 55 as a % of total. My experience in New Zealand is that older devs are doing fine as a cohort, altho…
This may be NOW. Sounds like “they” could save a lot of money automating the boring stuff. I wonder if they are working on that...