6 ms·

Dude, you got shit on, but your entire post screams unprofessional. If you want to be a professional, and be treated like a professional, you need to act profes

by cplease 11y ago

Dude, you got shit on, but your entire post screams unprofessional. If you want to be a professional, and be treated like a professional, you need to act professional. Harsh perhaps but that's the truth. If this is a serious job solicitation and not just catharsis you are doing it all wrong. Starting with how desperate you are, how proud you made your mom, and how shitty you've been doing and been treated does not make the hirers of desirable jobs want to hire you. If nothing else, go google "just-world hypothesis." I'm not in a hiring position right now (although I know plenty of hiring managers itching for referrals) but if I were I wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot pole even if on some level you make your plight sympathetic. Why? Because your post radiates "danger, high risk, unprofessional, possibly unstable individual who does not know how to behave in a business setting." Scrub this and start over.

pauleastlund 11y ago
I hear where you're coming from, but if he had scrubbed all of that from this post and gone with "professional" -- "I am a self-taught web dev looking for work, I am familiar with Ruby and have recently been doing API work, I want to work remotely and can start immediately" -- would it have gotten anywhere near the front page of HN?
- cplease 11y ago
  In my corner of the industry, all attention is not good attention.
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    All attention is monetizable. Maybe you become the finance guy who may have laundered money for the narcolumbians, or maybe you become the lawyer that kept the mob boss out of jail. But that's perception, not necessarily reality. In any case, you're the guy that gets to charge more because you have more clients. I'm kind of curious, if you're willing to give a general corner of industry. I can't think of anything that doesn't have "bad boy" characters. Seems like any federal agent kind of person would attract attention from the CIA. A doctor maybe? Still seems like someone willing to write off-topic prescriptions would command more salary. It's actually kind of tough to think of a profession that needs to be perfectly ethical, and also appear to be perfectly ethical. Aerospace designers kill test pilots. SEC agents that appear to be on the take probably get bribed more often than the squeaky clean. Maybe there's some corner of insurance that having a reputation would endanger your employer somehow. Everything i can think of right now implies higher salary.
    - pauleastlund 11y ago
      I mean, I take his point that some kinds of attention are really bad. I knew mchurch at Google and that whole debacle was a pretty up-close look at just how bad they can be. I just don't think this case is analogous. mchurch became instantly infamous with all Googlers, which made him radioactive in a big swath of the upper tier of the software industry, not just in NYC but also CA and other tech hubs. In contrast, this guy posted one thread to Hacker News that (from what I can tell) is fairly anonymized. Maybe folks close to him will recognize that this is his story, and maybe in his local dev community word will get around that he wrote it. But he's looking for remote work, and I think it extremely unlikely that he'll go to apply for a remote job a year from now and they will somehow connect him to this post.
atroyn 11y ago
I'm not sure that he intends this to be the cover letter he sends out with his application. It's important to have a venue to vent too.
Stratoscope 11y ago
This is harsh advice, but it's also some of the best advice in this thread (along with mmaunder's comment). OP should definitely take heed.
nilkn 11y ago
I felt this way at first, but not after reading the entire post. Yes, it was emotionally driven and certainly goes against a lot of rules for job solicitation. But I actually think he's shown himself to have good character here. He isn't attempting to sabotage the company even though he could. This happened very recently so you'd expect some of the emotions to be raw. I don't think this person is "high risk" if firing them after abusing them means that they're still loyal enough to you to not reveal your identity publicly. It sounds like this person was a trooper right up to the very end and is in fact pretty much the opposite of high risk.
- Bonogongo 11y ago
  He blackmailed his boss, used f* f* f* in a conversation with him and you think "hink he's shown himself to have good character here."? Holy Batman.
  - nilkn 11y ago
    Where is the part where he blackmailed anyone?
  - Bonogongo 11y ago
    @nilkin "You give me more money or I leave." vs. Just walking away from the negotiation. From my experience if you give in to "You give me more money or I leave" 6 months down the road it will be another "You give me more money or I leave" and then another. Wikipedia: "Blackmail is an act [..] involving unjustified threats to make [..] cause loss to another unless a demand is met."
    - gayprogrammer 11y ago
      Paying an employee for work and services is not "a loss". It's an exchange.
      - lagadu 11y ago
        I'll go further and say it's an investment.
Bonogongo 11y ago
From my point as a hiring manager for quite some time, I can only second "danger, high risk, unprofessional, possibly unstable individual who does not know how to behave in a business setting.
- atroyn 11y ago
  Based on your comments I don't think you've ever been a hiring manager. Or if you have, your organisations must really be hurting. Your comments read like a power fantasy.
wyclif 11y ago
I don't think he was wrong to post this at all. Stories of bad actors in the CEO space ought to be exposed, and it sounds like he was treated very shabbily indeed. But I'll quickly qualify that by adding that it can really only be a one-time catharsis. He can't afford to make a habit out of this kind of post. In that sense, I agree with you. Professionalism is important in terms of him getting out of the hole he's in and getting a proper gig, but if he had been professional with this post I'd never have seen it or read it. Brokedev: My advice would be to follow the recommendations given by "ecliptik" above. Work on your professional development: your resume, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc. Then market yourself like crazy with a good personal blog (showing what you're doing, learning, and experimenting with) and Twitter. Follow programmers you admire, and use Lists on Twitter to create a custom list of RoR developers so you can check out what they're working on and filter out noise. That won't be hard to do. Then keep at it. Make sure you're programming every day. Get involved in an open source project, and get your code on GitHub.
alashley 11y ago
I'm sure a large part of his emotionally charged reaction has to do with the fact that he has a family. Sounds like he gave the job his all, but given his situation in life, I don't know how else he could have reacted to this. Added to that he doesn't really have the support of his wife since she doesn't yet know. My point is that a lot of factors are at play, so labelling him as unprofessional is a bit unfair to him at the moment. He's in panic mode.
etchalon 11y ago
Well, that's a pretty terrible and vastly incorrect thing to say. As someone who actually hires people, allow me to assure the poster that nothing about his story says anything of the sort. It screams "person of good faith who got taken advantage of by an asshole."
andrelaszlo 11y ago
I would just like to point out that OP didn't put his name, and he didn't mention the name of the CEO or the company. I think he acted very professionally, maybe until the point where he was fired (in a very unprofessional way). I think we all have a point where we stop acting unprofessionally if we are being treated badly. The important thing is that he's just venting, and trying to use his bad experience to his advantage. Let's say you get a resume from a web developer with some factory experience, some design experience and an internship. If you check his references you might hear that he was fired and that he acted unprofessionally. Maybe that he had "unrealistic salary expectations", or that "his personal life got in the way of work". (Because the CEO clearly was an ahole). He had some bad luck, tried to do a good job and now he's in a tough spot. I think that's easy to sympathize with.
cplease 11y ago
Wow, a lot of replies. Just want to clarify my meaning here. The intent is really a more frank and critical version of mmaunder's advice above. When I say he is unprofessional, I'm not talking about per se what he did at work, how he left (involuntarily), or his reaction. That was more amateurish, which isn't exactly "professional," but not unprofessional. He should have set expectations and negotiated better and harder earlier. He should have done a job search on the DL so he had something lined up before giving an ultimatum; the writing was on the wall anyway. Woulda shoulda coulda. Well, coding and negotiating skills are not correlated. Join the club. Hopefully he will learn and do better next time. What is unprofessional is posting a pseudonymous rant to Hacker News with your email address and "begging for work." Posting a pseudonymous "My shitty employer shafted me" story to HN would be spot on. But turning that into a job solicitation is a huge, unprofessional blunder. Yeah, he touched a nerve and got bumped up the page. Yeah, he's probably going to be inundated with offers. Charity offers for weak positions of the kind he left. Maybe he won't be screwed over hard, but he won't be treated like a professional and get the terms he could if he were working from a position of strength, competence, confidence and success. He'll get an offer consistent with desperation. Do you want to work at a company that seeks out desperate candidates as your colleagues? The fact is, if you want $75K, you have to find someone who thinks you are worth $75K. If you don't have a degree or a distinguished resume, you've got a lot to prove even in a tight job market for engineers. The way you do that is show that you kick ass on the front end and can lay down code with the next guy, and communicate your worth and expectations with confidence. But yeah, those of you who think a self-pitying rant about starving in a trailer and getting fired from his first glorified internship in a winning career strategy, you do what works for you.
s73v3r 11y ago
Your entire post screams "employer I wouldn't want to work for."
aagha 11y ago
> Scrub this and start over. What does that mean?! Erase the tumblr post?
- cplease 11y ago
  Of course. What else would it mean? And start over, not with another tumblr post, but with a legitimate career hunt.

by cplease 11y ago

pauleastlund 11y ago

I hear where you're coming from, but if he had scrubbed all of that from this post and gone with "professional" -- "I am a self-taught web dev looking for work, I am familiar with Ruby and have recently been doing API work, I want to work remotely and can start immediately" -- would it have gotten anywhere near the front page of HN?

cplease 11y ago
In my corner of the industry, all attention is not good attention.
- jfoutz 11y ago
  All attention is monetizable. Maybe you become the finance guy who may have laundered money for the narcolumbians, or maybe you become the lawyer that kept the mob boss out of jail. But that's perception, not necessarily reality. In any case, you're the guy that gets to charge more because you have more clients. I'm kind of curious, if you're willing to give a general corner of industry. I can't think of anything that doesn't have "bad boy" characters. Seems like any federal agent kind of person would attract attention from the CIA. A doctor maybe? Still seems like someone willing to write off-topic prescriptions would command more salary. It's actually kind of tough to think of a profession that needs to be perfectly ethical, and also appear to be perfectly ethical. Aerospace designers kill test pilots. SEC agents that appear to be on the take probably get bribed more often than the squeaky clean. Maybe there's some corner of insurance that having a reputation would endanger your employer somehow. Everything i can think of right now implies higher salary.
  - pauleastlund 11y ago
    I mean, I take his point that some kinds of attention are really bad. I knew mchurch at Google and that whole debacle was a pretty up-close look at just how bad they can be. I just don't think this case is analogous. mchurch became instantly infamous with all Googlers, which made him radioactive in a big swath of the upper tier of the software industry, not just in NYC but also CA and other tech hubs. In contrast, this guy posted one thread to Hacker News that (from what I can tell) is fairly anonymized. Maybe folks close to him will recognize that this is his story, and maybe in his local dev community word will get around that he wrote it. But he's looking for remote work, and I think it extremely unlikely that he'll go to apply for a remote job a year from now and they will somehow connect him to this post.

atroyn 11y ago

I'm not sure that he intends this to be the cover letter he sends out with his application. It's important to have a venue to vent too.

Stratoscope 11y ago

This is harsh advice, but it's also some of the best advice in this thread (along with mmaunder's comment). OP should definitely take heed.

nilkn 11y ago

I felt this way at first, but not after reading the entire post. Yes, it was emotionally driven and certainly goes against a lot of rules for job solicitation. But I actually think he's shown himself to have good character here. He isn't attempting to sabotage the company even though he could. This happened very recently so you'd expect some of the emotions to be raw. I don't think this person is "high risk" if firing them after abusing them means that they're still loyal enough to you to not reveal your identity publicly. It sounds like this person was a trooper right up to the very end and is in fact pretty much the opposite of high risk.

Bonogongo 11y ago
He blackmailed his boss, used f* f* f* in a conversation with him and you think "hink he's shown himself to have good character here."? Holy Batman.
- nilkn 11y ago
  Where is the part where he blackmailed anyone?
- Bonogongo 11y ago
  @nilkin "You give me more money or I leave." vs. Just walking away from the negotiation. From my experience if you give in to "You give me more money or I leave" 6 months down the road it will be another "You give me more money or I leave" and then another. Wikipedia: "Blackmail is an act [..] involving unjustified threats to make [..] cause loss to another unless a demand is met."
  - gayprogrammer 11y ago
    Paying an employee for work and services is not "a loss". It's an exchange.
    - lagadu 11y ago
      I'll go further and say it's an investment.

Bonogongo 11y ago

From my point as a hiring manager for quite some time, I can only second "danger, high risk, unprofessional, possibly unstable individual who does not know how to behave in a business setting.

atroyn 11y ago
Based on your comments I don't think you've ever been a hiring manager. Or if you have, your organisations must really be hurting. Your comments read like a power fantasy.

wyclif 11y ago

I don't think he was wrong to post this at all. Stories of bad actors in the CEO space ought to be exposed, and it sounds like he was treated very shabbily indeed. But I'll quickly qualify that by adding that it can really only be a one-time catharsis. He can't afford to make a habit out of this kind of post. In that sense, I agree with you. Professionalism is important in terms of him getting out of the hole he's in and getting a proper gig, but if he had been professional with this post I'd never have seen it or read it. Brokedev: My advice would be to follow the recommendations given by "ecliptik" above. Work on your professional development: your resume, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc. Then market yourself like crazy with a good personal blog (showing what you're doing, learning, and experimenting with) and Twitter. Follow programmers you admire, and use Lists on Twitter to create a custom list of RoR developers so you can check out what they're working on and filter out noise. That won't be hard to do. Then keep at it. Make sure you're programming every day. Get involved in an open source project, and get your code on GitHub.

alashley 11y ago

I'm sure a large part of his emotionally charged reaction has to do with the fact that he has a family. Sounds like he gave the job his all, but given his situation in life, I don't know how else he could have reacted to this. Added to that he doesn't really have the support of his wife since she doesn't yet know. My point is that a lot of factors are at play, so labelling him as unprofessional is a bit unfair to him at the moment. He's in panic mode.

etchalon 11y ago

Well, that's a pretty terrible and vastly incorrect thing to say. As someone who actually hires people, allow me to assure the poster that nothing about his story says anything of the sort. It screams "person of good faith who got taken advantage of by an asshole."

andrelaszlo 11y ago

I would just like to point out that OP didn't put his name, and he didn't mention the name of the CEO or the company. I think he acted very professionally, maybe until the point where he was fired (in a very unprofessional way). I think we all have a point where we stop acting unprofessionally if we are being treated badly. The important thing is that he's just venting, and trying to use his bad experience to his advantage. Let's say you get a resume from a web developer with some factory experience, some design experience and an internship. If you check his references you might hear that he was fired and that he acted unprofessionally. Maybe that he had "unrealistic salary expectations", or that "his personal life got in the way of work". (Because the CEO clearly was an ahole). He had some bad luck, tried to do a good job and now he's in a tough spot. I think that's easy to sympathize with.

cplease 11y ago

Wow, a lot of replies. Just want to clarify my meaning here. The intent is really a more frank and critical version of mmaunder's advice above. When I say he is unprofessional, I'm not talking about per se what he did at work, how he left (involuntarily), or his reaction. That was more amateurish, which isn't exactly "professional," but not unprofessional. He should have set expectations and negotiated better and harder earlier. He should have done a job search on the DL so he had something lined up before giving an ultimatum; the writing was on the wall anyway. Woulda shoulda coulda. Well, coding and negotiating skills are not correlated. Join the club. Hopefully he will learn and do better next time. What is unprofessional is posting a pseudonymous rant to Hacker News with your email address and "begging for work." Posting a pseudonymous "My shitty employer shafted me" story to HN would be spot on. But turning that into a job solicitation is a huge, unprofessional blunder. Yeah, he touched a nerve and got bumped up the page. Yeah, he's probably going to be inundated with offers. Charity offers for weak positions of the kind he left. Maybe he won't be screwed over hard, but he won't be treated like a professional and get the terms he could if he were working from a position of strength, competence, confidence and success. He'll get an offer consistent with desperation. Do you want to work at a company that seeks out desperate candidates as your colleagues? The fact is, if you want $75K, you have to find someone who thinks you are worth $75K. If you don't have a degree or a distinguished resume, you've got a lot to prove even in a tight job market for engineers. The way you do that is show that you kick ass on the front end and can lay down code with the next guy, and communicate your worth and expectations with confidence. But yeah, those of you who think a self-pitying rant about starving in a trailer and getting fired from his first glorified internship in a winning career strategy, you do what works for you.

s73v3r 11y ago

Your entire post screams "employer I wouldn't want to work for."

aagha 11y ago

> Scrub this and start over. What does that mean?! Erase the tumblr post?

cplease 11y ago
Of course. What else would it mean? And start over, not with another tumblr post, but with a legitimate career hunt.