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Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

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Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#81

Post by beisner »

jimmaswell wrote: post #70
currymj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your blog is very high quality and i've enjoyed it in the past (Metropolis-Hastings post especially). however there's a problem if everybody is going to do this, if it becomes standard that you want to have a blog in order to promote yourself during a job hunt. i think this is why search results are cluttered with a proliferation of largely useless "awesome X" GitHub repositories, repetitive bad Medium articles on ba…

Civil engineers don't have to build bridges in their back yards or write blog posts about I beams; their education is presumed sufficient for an entry level job. Why can't tech work like this? Do students need to form some kind of union and agree not to talk about extracurricular programming to interviewers for their first job?

We understand and can certify how bridges are constructed. Someone from the government can come in and check your work reasonably quickly and make sure it’s up to code. There’s a “trust” step and a “verify” step. And it often takes a lot of time to do iteration.

Software engineering isn’t like that. Not only are the tools changing every year, but 95% of the work in a project isn’t actually design or construction, it’s figuring out what the client wants or the product should be! Requirements are discovered as construction happens because most of the time software is solving a business problem not a physics problem.

There’s no certification because there isn’t something to standardize. Every company has different problems, technical solutions are always changing. Interview processes are trying to look at generic problem solving + communication + ability to translate some easy algorithmic idea into code. They don’t do a great job of assessing that, but the point is that two CS degrees can look identical on paper but there’s so much fuzzy interpersonal/business/requirement-assessment work that basically isnt captured at all by a degree, and is really hard to demonstrate on a resume.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#82

Post by type_enthusiast »

Swizec wrote: post #64
piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing.

If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact.

Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#83

Post by oblio »

type_enthusiast wrote: post #82
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing. If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact. Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved.

> If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing.

Yes, but they're exceptions.

> Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved.

The vast majority of the best paying jobs out there (FAANG), don't care at all about references.

It's a big world, it depends a lot in which circles you move around, I guess.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#84

Post by ac2u »

Trasmatta wrote: post #73
nightski wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a false dichotomy. You can work on deep technical problems and provide lots of value.

Those examples I was giving did provide lots of value, to the client. The section from the article was talking about optimizing for visibility. Deep technical problems with lots of value are not always visible, and I think it's fine to build a career around those types of things.

Still don’t really understand what your objection here is. As the parent to your comment said: the OP never said don’t do it, they just said don’t stop once the code is checked in and follow up by pointing out the value to others incase it’s not obvious.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#85

Post by punnerud »

Swizec wrote: post #64
piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

If you “improve admin interface load times by 20%” do the calculation on what that is in saved time and possible money over 5 years. Then you have both.

You should of course have someone in management agree to your numbers and approve that you can use it on your CV.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#86

Post by graeme »

jefftk wrote: post #79
graeme wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. OP wrote a blog about their research paper. That is by definition a nov or rare topic. If people use any kind of horse sense when choosing blogging topics they will either choose something: 1. Unique, or 2. Where what they have to contribute beats what already exists To be sure, anything poorly done is clutter. But this applies to the work product itself too. If someone writes garbage, superfluous bl…

I don't think this is entirely true. Getting in the habit of writing, even if a lot of it is things other people have said better, means that when you do have something novel to say you will be much more practiced. My experience is that when people try to only write the good posts they don't end up publishing things, but if they write hundreds of posts dozens will be good.

I agree, and you’re actually supporting my argument with additional reasons against OP haha.

But in the case of a research blog about a new research paper I think my point above trends closer to true, as the novelty of the subject guarantees novelty of the blog.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#87

Post by pessimizer »

type_enthusiast wrote: post #82
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing. If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact. Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved.

If optimizing an internal tool can raise profits by 20%, I don't understand your disagreement. The comment you're replying to mentioned profits vs. unnoticed efficiency, not internal tools vs. consumer-facing software.

If it makes a big impact, it makes a big impact.

> If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact.

This seems like an argument that there are no priorities and no things that are more important than other things. I don't think you believe that.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#88

Post by AlexC04 »

piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

What's a funny coincidence is that I've been thinking about almost exactly this for a little while.

Just in the last two weeks I decided to create a podcast where I interview the exact types of developers who optimize SQL inside business apps.

In fact, literally just last night I recorded and uploaded (to YouTube and the various podcast platforms) episode zero. Not an actual interview yet, but a statement of purpose and a placeholder so I can hopefully have a small audience on release day. (I'm hoping for about 50 subs by the time I launch the first)

I was 100% not going to promote on HN until after I had at least 10 episodes published... but fundamentally it was born out of a desire to attempt to solve for the "unsexy" programmer.

Anyway: https://youtu.be/9mmgfxSeqPA

Or you can search for "Ship It" on your favorite podcast platform.

In terms of feedback, any and all is welcome, though I've got a personal preference for constructive feedback as opposed to just telling me that my stupid face looks really stupid.

:)

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#90

Post by samatman »

dfilppi wrote: post #61

The OSS value is overstated. You can just copy someone else's and claim you did it.

You can also just put Harvard on your resume. It's cheaper and takes a lot less time.

In either case, if you're caught, you've committed fraud, and you'll be lucky if the only response from the company is to fire you.

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