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Siver’s ‘Law of Financial Viability’: “When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence

Siver’s ‘Law of Financial Viability’: “When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence, continue. If not, move on.” I keep being moved on, and nothing I've tried has ever made real money. That's why I haven't developed mastery of any specific skill (a Masters degree doesn't count). HR departments now hate me because I had too many short internships. I tried to fix that by settling into a job for 4 years, but now that contract's not being renewed, I'm unemployed. I keep trying to throw side projects onto Show HN, but they haven't turned into job offers. How far should I keep moving on before I give up?

presscast 8y ago
Alternative possibility: maybe you're moving on too quickly? Obviously I don't know, but it might be the case that you've been too extreme in the "move on" part and enough in the "following an appealing pursuit". Just my $.02 ...
atemerev 8y ago
When I was in the same situation, I compiled a list of all high-paying fields, and tried to see if I liked any of them enough to go all in. Law: definitely no. Medicine: maybe, but too much competition and strain. Finance: no, but maybe there's something I can learn to love given my skills and inclinations... Yes, electronic trading! So I went all-in into trading technology, and was happy enough and well-paid ever since.
- lylecubed 8y ago
  HFT? Don't you need a PhD for that?
Kagerjay 8y ago
Some words of advice from looking at your site and resume UK is well known for having a 2 page resume. But America, this is not the case, its a one pager. You blog & resume speaks of a very european mindset as well,you should know that European Companies =/= American companies in terms of cultural fit. Many european computer science jobs are more B2B than America, which has a large amount of B2C as well I've done a lot of hiring, your resume has some serious red flags. It shows you jumped around too much, and there is just way too much irrelevant information. You should spend a bit of money and get resume critiquement / career critiques, this would be highly beneficial to you. Learn what your call to action is to both HR and to technical recruiters. Just put down the last 3 jobs you worked on You would gain a alot by instead focusing on learning UX design, both document and website wise. I have a short attention spam, I could not read your resume. I went as far as measuring the fonts for you. You put things at 10pt font... that's insane. 8pt font is as small as it goes, 14 to 16 pt is the preferred size for web-font readability. You would also learn a lot by taking better photos of yourself too. Your photo looks like MySpace Tom is in his prime. ------------------------------------------------------------------ You need to think in a companies' hiring shoes. What is their first impressions of you? If I were a recruiter for a big firm, this is how I would interpret you resume - 2 pager -> You can't figure what matters in our company. There is way too many things listed that are irrelevant to the job position, what is it you are looking for in the job - Blog -> it shows you don't have the best communication standards out there. It shows you have poor design aesthetics - Hobbies / couchsurfing -> This shows you don't know what matters in XYZ company. Companies could not care less about your hobbies, unless its related to work - "• Entrepreneurship: Buying, refurbishing and reselling a class set of iBooks in 2005; iPod repair at ", " Took online training courses in big data processing with ElasticSearch and Tensorfow machine learning. ",...etc → it shows you think a bit too highly of yourself, ego might be an issue. Reading through your writing on your blog suggests the same. I do not know you personally, I am only relaying what every HR person would think. I don't see any perspectives other than your own in your blogs, it suggests you might have issues acclimating to different cultures Your blog is not a blog. Its a journal. Know the difference. I am giving you 100% honest feedback on everything I've seen, you have a lot room for improvement not on the technical side of things. I'm not any better though, I recognize my weaknesses, my writing sucks and I tend to repeat myself. But I make strides of improving it everyday
- mailshanx 8y ago
  Would you be so kind as to look at my resume and give some feedback? I know I'm an internet stranger asking for your time - I'd understand if you don't want to do it, but I'll be very grateful if you did! :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/n41w2zja8au26wp/shankar_resume_cto.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/n41w2zja8au26wp/shankar_resume_cto...
  - Kagerjay 8y ago
    Looks great, even though its 2 pages long, since you have lots of experience. Top 1% on kaggle is seriously impressive though I see a few grammatical errors, "i". The "Subnero" link is broken by the way, might want to point it to the correct spot. If you use google link, I would suggest doing analytics tracking to see how many times its clicked (this gives you a good indication fo how many people read your resume) I imagine this is for datascience jobs, the things that stood out to me the most were - youtube links to actual talks is very good - 1% kaggle is really hard to get - actual publications otherwise it looks perfectly fine. Make sure the PDF is OCR readable, and make sure there is an accompaning .docx format as well
    - mailshanx 8y ago
      Thank you so much, I appreciate it! >> I see a few grammatical errors, "i" Do you mean I'm using small-letter "i" somewhere? I triple-checked, but can't seem to find that anywhere? >> If you use google link, I would suggest doing analytics tracking to see how many times its clicked That's a great idea! >> The "Subnero" link is broken by the way Thanks for catching that! >> Make sure the PDF is OCR readable, and make sure there is an accompaning .docx format as well I suspect its not OCR readable, and there is no .docx version either - the disadvantages of making your resume with Latex!
      - Kagerjay 8y ago
        Its on the http://vanishingradient.net/ http://vanishingradient.net/ (now defunct), with the small "i" ah okay you made it in latex. I always run my PDF's through Adobe Acrobat Pro X for OCR recognition. CTRL+F some words on there to see if it works. You want to ensure if it is OCR because it's going to be scraped for content through HR processors. That's why I recommended .docx format as well, granted that also let's headhunters delete your email address. Pandoc has a latex to pdf converter, I imagine this is what you used Also, you might want to change the resume name a bit differently. You wrote down "shankar_resume_cto.pdf". You might not be applying to a CTO position and might be taken as a threat to someone's existing CTO position. By the way, you should really link your kaggle profile on there if you really are in the top 1%. Gives recruiters no doubt that you are actually what you say you are.

presscast 8y ago

Alternative possibility: maybe you're moving on too quickly? Obviously I don't know, but it might be the case that you've been too extreme in the "move on" part and enough in the "following an appealing pursuit". Just my $.02 ...

atemerev 8y ago

When I was in the same situation, I compiled a list of all high-paying fields, and tried to see if I liked any of them enough to go all in. Law: definitely no. Medicine: maybe, but too much competition and strain. Finance: no, but maybe there's something I can learn to love given my skills and inclinations... Yes, electronic trading! So I went all-in into trading technology, and was happy enough and well-paid ever since.

lylecubed 8y ago
HFT? Don't you need a PhD for that?

Kagerjay 8y ago

Some words of advice from looking at your site and resume UK is well known for having a 2 page resume. But America, this is not the case, its a one pager. You blog & resume speaks of a very european mindset as well,you should know that European Companies =/= American companies in terms of cultural fit. Many european computer science jobs are more B2B than America, which has a large amount of B2C as well I've done a lot of hiring, your resume has some serious red flags. It shows you jumped around too much, and there is just way too much irrelevant information. You should spend a bit of money and get resume critiquement / career critiques, this would be highly beneficial to you. Learn what your call to action is to both HR and to technical recruiters. Just put down the last 3 jobs you worked on You would gain a alot by instead focusing on learning UX design, both document and website wise. I have a short attention spam, I could not read your resume. I went as far as measuring the fonts for you. You put things at 10pt font... that's insane. 8pt font is as small as it goes, 14 to 16 pt is the preferred size for web-font readability. You would also learn a lot by taking better photos of yourself too. Your photo looks like MySpace Tom is in his prime. ------------------------------------------------------------------ You need to think in a companies' hiring shoes. What is their first impressions of you? If I were a recruiter for a big firm, this is how I would interpret you resume - 2 pager -> You can't figure what matters in our company. There is way too many things listed that are irrelevant to the job position, what is it you are looking for in the job - Blog -> it shows you don't have the best communication standards out there. It shows you have poor design aesthetics - Hobbies / couchsurfing -> This shows you don't know what matters in XYZ company. Companies could not care less about your hobbies, unless its related to work - "• Entrepreneurship: Buying, refurbishing and reselling a class set of iBooks in 2005; iPod repair at ", " Took online training courses in big data processing with ElasticSearch and Tensorfow machine learning. ",...etc → it shows you think a bit too highly of yourself, ego might be an issue. Reading through your writing on your blog suggests the same. I do not know you personally, I am only relaying what every HR person would think. I don't see any perspectives other than your own in your blogs, it suggests you might have issues acclimating to different cultures Your blog is not a blog. Its a journal. Know the difference. I am giving you 100% honest feedback on everything I've seen, you have a lot room for improvement not on the technical side of things. I'm not any better though, I recognize my weaknesses, my writing sucks and I tend to repeat myself. But I make strides of improving it everyday

mailshanx 8y ago
Would you be so kind as to look at my resume and give some feedback? I know I'm an internet stranger asking for your time - I'd understand if you don't want to do it, but I'll be very grateful if you did! :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/n41w2zja8au26wp/shankar_resume_cto.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/n41w2zja8au26wp/shankar_resume_cto...
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  Looks great, even though its 2 pages long, since you have lots of experience. Top 1% on kaggle is seriously impressive though I see a few grammatical errors, "i". The "Subnero" link is broken by the way, might want to point it to the correct spot. If you use google link, I would suggest doing analytics tracking to see how many times its clicked (this gives you a good indication fo how many people read your resume) I imagine this is for datascience jobs, the things that stood out to me the most were - youtube links to actual talks is very good - 1% kaggle is really hard to get - actual publications otherwise it looks perfectly fine. Make sure the PDF is OCR readable, and make sure there is an accompaning .docx format as well
  - mailshanx 8y ago
    Thank you so much, I appreciate it! >> I see a few grammatical errors, "i" Do you mean I'm using small-letter "i" somewhere? I triple-checked, but can't seem to find that anywhere? >> If you use google link, I would suggest doing analytics tracking to see how many times its clicked That's a great idea! >> The "Subnero" link is broken by the way Thanks for catching that! >> Make sure the PDF is OCR readable, and make sure there is an accompaning .docx format as well I suspect its not OCR readable, and there is no .docx version either - the disadvantages of making your resume with Latex!
    - Kagerjay 8y ago
      Its on the http://vanishingradient.net/ http://vanishingradient.net/ (now defunct), with the small "i" ah okay you made it in latex. I always run my PDF's through Adobe Acrobat Pro X for OCR recognition. CTRL+F some words on there to see if it works. You want to ensure if it is OCR because it's going to be scraped for content through HR processors. That's why I recommended .docx format as well, granted that also let's headhunters delete your email address. Pandoc has a latex to pdf converter, I imagine this is what you used Also, you might want to change the resume name a bit differently. You wrote down "shankar_resume_cto.pdf". You might not be applying to a CTO position and might be taken as a threat to someone's existing CTO position. By the way, you should really link your kaggle profile on there if you really are in the top 1%. Gives recruiters no doubt that you are actually what you say you are.