Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid • Hacker News Board

Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid

#41

Post by toomuchtodo » Sun, Sep 29, 2013, 10:04 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #18

zalzane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that most jobs in fact have no associated ad so what should he do then; go into google maps and drop off a resume at every nearby engineering firm?

No -- you might as well drop off a ream of paper at the recycler's, as that would cut out the middleman. It isn't difficult to meet people who have authority to hire people. Go to meetups/tech events/conferences in your area. Demonstrate value; ask people if they/their firms are hiring or if they know anyone who is. Some people who go to meetups/etc do not have hiring authority, but they often know who in their organ…

This is excellent advice. Any thoughts on perhaps doing a tutorial series on how to better connect yourself with hiring decision makers? Similar to your web app training.

Disclaimer: I'm a subscriber on your mailing list, watch your videos, etc.

Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid

#42

Post by hnal943 » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 12:47 AM UTC

spitfire wrote: post #38

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #10

There's an element of a collective action problem going on: why train your employees when they will most likely be gone in 3 years or two years or six months? Even if you retain half of them, you're still spending time training the other half---training that will reap you no benefit, and may even end up helping your competitor. People take better care of things they own , and higher employee mobility means that compa…

What happens if you don't train them and they stay?

Then the productive ones (whether through self-training or hard work or both) rise to the top while the others don't. It's true that they may be less professional in the solutions they create, but that's a hard thing for non-technical people to identify.

Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid

#43

Post by patio11 » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 7:29 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

patio11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No -- you might as well drop off a ream of paper at the recycler's, as that would cut out the middleman. It isn't difficult to meet people who have authority to hire people. Go to meetups/tech events/conferences in your area. Demonstrate value; ask people if they/their firms are hiring or if they know anyone who is. Some people who go to meetups/etc do not have hiring authority, but they often know who in their organ…

This is excellent advice. Any thoughts on perhaps doing a tutorial series on how to better connect yourself with hiring decision makers? Similar to your web app training. Disclaimer: I'm a subscriber on your mailing list, watch your videos, etc.

That's more of Ramit Sethi's beat than mine. FWIW, I think he has really good advice on it.

In terms of why that doesn't make a huge amount of business sense for me:

1) I'm pretty busy (and behind on current commitments due to illness), so adding a new product line seems like a poor decision at the moment.

2) In general I would prefer to go up the value/sophistication chain rather than going down it. No offense to people looking for their first job or a career upgrade, but the amount you're willing to pay for that is not nearly the amount of money a software company CEO will pay for a $X million bump in sales, and I know I can successfully deliver that in at least some form factors. It's also likely worth less than nailing my response to this RFQ from a hospital chain for telephony services. (I write for non-monetary reasons, too, but things have to catch my fancy for that and job searches mostly don't.)

3) I'd generally prefer to talk about things I have experience in doing rather than things I don't. While I can do some extrapolations from experience, first principles of marketing, and things I know from industry participation, when it comes down to it I have a lot more experience selling software than I do on either hiring or getting hired as a FTE at (American) software companies.