421–430 of 506 posts
thus a big idea search should be on what are common processes. "reading english" seems to be the next big one
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.
Companies sometimes aren't honest about their job postings asking too much, and instead blame the worker population on not having the skills they need. The more skills you are trying to get filled for one position, the less likely a candidate will match all of those skills. Take any job posting with 20-30 lines of skills or requirements and it's really no wonder they can't find someone that meets all or even half of…
I think that hiring practices haven’t really caught up to pace of reality yet. Nobody does the same thing for more than 5 years anymore, even if you’ve been at a company that long what you’re doing today does not look like what you were doing then. The chance that a new hire already knows all the parts of your stack is basically zero. What you want is someone who soaks up frameworks like a sponge.
This should be titled "Condensed snippets of accumulated wisdom, focusing mostly on software and business, that I am fairly confident of and feel compelled to share with you". Many of these nuggets are not "obvious", for any conventional understanding of that word. That said, I enjoyed the post, and liked the concise format.
I've noticed that this is a common thing - it's very rare for someone who has spent years in a particular area to sit down and distill things that have become obvious to them over time in a way that can be taught to newcomers.
> Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…
If you have 3 primary skill sets you should have 3 focused resumes.
If you want a position that requires a generalist, the only/best fit would be founder. In almost all other circumstances, companies hire for a problem and not general optimizations. Even if they need a generalist.
I would posit that you have a marketing problem and not a skills mismatch problem. The noise to signal ratio on your resume may be making it seem to not match any position.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also gulf a between what companies think they need, and what they actually need. Almost everyone hires on technologies and not the abstract skillsets required to learn said technologies.
Any Idea how to find a company that hires on that abstract skillset, potentially by throwing one into cold water to test for it? ~Someone with little resume-driven experience but good grogging skills
> Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…
I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.
> Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…
many people can have skills to do x but if I cant rely on you to do that for me for the next year at a high quality then I dont want to take the risk. You are not just a good frontend engineer you are a good frontend engineer that is competing with other good frontend engineers. You lack professionalism (it sounds like) so you lose against those guys. Good luck, at some point you either find the place that works for…
Have you ever done freelance web stuff for small businesses? There are some people who want you to be their webmaster... You give them a CMS and they want you to go fix their typos. So you say "Okay, sure, but it'll be $50/hr" and then they get frustrated because they don't have someone doing that kind of work on their end. They think it's your job to "make their website", but don't want to take ownership of the thing.
This is an analogy for the kind of thing I'm taking about. I want to help solve problems, and I want to provide value for my employers, but I'm unwilling mindlessly give up my time to people who don't value it outside of their myopic needs. A lot of times, that's what's expected to be "a professional". Well I don't want that. I'd rather be an amateur who's also a respectful and savvy business partner, who's definitely interested in helping you with your project but also keeps healthy boundaries for myself.
I'm definitely more of "an amateur" (lover of) than a professional, but I don't see why that should make me automatically "unprofessional" in my business relationships. On the contrary, I think it's fully possible to "be professional" without providing unrelenting 40+ hr/week service for a year. If that's not what you're looking for then with all due respect that's fine! But please don't blanket assume I'm "less professional".
> Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…
> Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…
I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.