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Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. Your applying to those companies with 0 experien

Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The entry level is extremely competitive and you have nothing to make you interesting to hire. They get thousands of applications for those jobs. You are still young, plenty of time to learn, but I recommend taking a step back and rethink your strategy. There are plenty of companies that do not get thousands of applications for jobs. Let me put it bluntly: you are not qualified to be a software engineer. There is no reason anyone would currently hire you, unless you are personable and fun to talk to. You show immaturity in the way you handled the flaw in the system you described. Calling your boss's boss because you think you are right is childish. Additionally, you do not understand how to get a software job, you do not have realistic expectations for what kind of jobs you are qualified to acquire. A few years ago my brother, who is in his thirties, was stuck in a dead end job he hated. So he took some classes in 3D modeling. He worked hard, built out his portfolio, networked, and eventually landed a job at a world famous video game studio making AAA games at an interesting role that builds his skills. What he did not do was blindly apply to jobs he was not qualified to do with zero training

dcolkitt 6y ago
> Your writing is not strong, I don't know. I think he has pretty decent writing. Kinda reminds me of William Gibson. It may be stylistically unusual, but it's definitely better than the median SWE. At least in terms of clearly conveying his thoughts.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  I don't have much experience but that begs me the question, how bad were the SWEs you were working with that had even poorer communication tone than this person.
  - DetroitThrow 6y ago
    I agree, I understood his point and the emotions he's probably feeling as it's an HN post, but so many red flags brings up some significant disconnect in the expectations he had of the audience. I hope he's able to get some good advice from this thread, he seems bright.
- onlyfortoday2 6y ago
  exactly... his writing is fine.
- stevenhuang 6y ago
  The writing is disjointed and does not easily flow. It's too curt and while that's alright for a casual i.e., HN audience, if that's how one communicates in other contexts there will be miscommunication.
  - lkm93 6y ago
    And you just used "i.e." incorrectly. Congratulations. Hey snakedoctor! You're probably not a sociopathic, autistic, illiterate narcissist like everyone here is telling you. For one, your writing is just fine, and beyond that any of your bad decisions can simply be explained by youth and (understandable) desperation. I would suggest staying away from HN for life advice. People here might have some money but, aside from that, they are mostly low-intelligence failures.
- urda 6y ago
  The entire post flows awkwardly and feels more like an angry ramble than a coherent thought process was applied. This coupled with being a dropout. quitting job after job, and basically phising executives for attention makes this candidate a high risk hire and is not worth the time. Poster: You will need to extend your hard skills and demonstrate why a group should take the risk of your background on. It may be brutally honest, but the world is tough.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    In fairness, by the time someone makes a forum post like this, they are probably at the frustrated angry rant stage.
    - urda 6y ago
      Alas, this is not an acceptable cover or excuse for this behavior.
      - bawolff 6y ago
        It wouldn't be good as a cover letter, but as far as social media forum posts, its totally fine.
        coagmano 6y ago
        You are both entirely right. It's hard to judge their writing without seeing their resume and/or cover letter
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- Kluny 6y ago
  I wouldn't hire William Gibson tbh.
- atoav 6y ago
  What is lacking however (and what seems to impact the opinion of many here negatively) is the total lack of self reflectivity. E.g. the previous jobs at the 3 big companies. Why did OP stop working there? Who ended the contract and why? If OP quit themselves, we lack any reason to understand why and whether this was a good idea in hindsight. Similar situation with the spoofing thing: this is an incredibly daring thing to do. A very self reflective person might ask themselves question like: "Maybe that was a mistake? How did the other side perceive this?" — especially after a rejection. With OP I get two vibes: 1. The issues that lead to them not getting the job they deserve are external. For OP it is out of the question that their behaviour/path they took in the world could have to do with how they are judged. From what I read there is no really rational ground for this confidence. 2. Instead of asking how to change the perception the other side has of them, OP seems to be more interested in the question how they can exploit their way into the position they think they deserve, without putting the leg work and trustbuilding into it. Technically and stylistically the writing is okay, it just seems to be written from the perspective of someone who didn't follow through on reflecting their own position in the job market and their own flaws when it comes to human interaction.
  - wwn_se 6y ago
    Totally agree, combined with the fact that op seems to focus on big tech giants that are generally hard to get in to is a big red flag. My advise is to find a smaller company in a "boring field" (think local schools, manufacturing and retail not google/apple) and try to get the most entry level job that's still gives hands on programming / sysadmin experience. Many small help desks let juniors have small side projects improving something specific for example.
georgeecollins 6y ago
I agree but I would cut the OP some slack on the writing for a forum post. I know I have dashed off things here that could use some proof reading. But the gist of what you are saying makes sense to me. Going back to college seems like a good idea as a general direction.
- sombremesa 6y ago
  The GP has put a "your" instead of "you're" in (almost) the very next sentence, so you don't even need to point to your own mistakes to illustrate your point...
  - komaromy 6y ago
    > The GP has put a "your" instead of "you're" in (almost) the very next sentence Correctly so
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - bawolff 6y ago
    I think GP might be a bit hard on writing style. I know plenty of succesful software engineers with poor writing abilities, and realistically my own are far from great. However your vs you're is the type of grammar mistake that really does not matter. Nobody is going to be confused by it. Writing structure is much more important. Edit: also looking back, GP used your correctly, so wut?
  - lolinder 6y ago
    That was my initial reaction, but the "your" is actually correct there: > Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The clause "applying to..." is possessed by "your".
    - jiofih 6y ago
      Or, more directly, “your applying [...] is unrealistic”.
pcthrowaway 6y ago
> i can tell you did not attend college. I minored in English, and OP writes better than most of the English majors I was in writing workshops with. edit: To elaborate, this was at a local university in a U.S. city where 70% of the population were native English speakers. None of the people in my writing workshops were ESL.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I remember the largest contribution I provided my senior project for my bachelor's degree was correcting group members' usage of there/their/they're. Definitely can confirm college does not mean one can write.
snakedoctor 6y ago
Not to be argumentative. But yes, I did attend college. Send me a email, and I'll send you an email from my college email address (Hasn't been deactivited yet). I can send you my college transcript if that helps.. Well, I did get hired by IBM as a programmer so... I've contributed to a GNU open source project.. So I feel that I am qualifed for a entry level developer/SecEng/Security Analyst role. I went above my bosses head because they did not remedy the issue, and weren't going to.. The SVP guy that I did contact told me that would be willing to vouch for me that I did find a security vuln etc. He was actually quite receptive. I shouldn't of even had to, or felt like I had to go above my bosses head. There should've been a security email I could've emailed. That was at EA. At Amazon I emailed the VP in charge of the anti-fraud system since it might've taken longer for the blue team to send it to the right folks. But yeah, I do agree with you slighty on that.
- klodolph 6y ago
  Not trying to argue either. Contributing to an open-source project is a very different kind of activity from being a member of a team at a company. Programming is only half the job.
- chillfox 6y ago
  The problem now is that you likely can't use either of those managers that you went over the heads of as references for future jobs (they may not say nice things).
- maroonblazer 6y ago
  When responding to a comment that asserts your writing is not strong you'd want to read, re-read, and re-re-read your reply to ensure it is well written. You seem to have not done that, which lends credence to the parent's comment. My take is you seem to have an inflated sense of your abilities. I've interviewed people who share this trait and it's a turn off unless they have a portfolio of work to back it up. Perhaps try taking a more humble approach. Ask lots of questions as to what/where they need help. If they align with your experience then share concrete examples of how you've helped others in those same situations. If you haven't, make note of the challenges and see if you can identify patterns across interviews. This would provide hints as to what skill-building you could focus on in the interim. Good luck!
tempestn 6y ago
Given the relative lack of experience and lack of education I'm wondering how OP managed to get interviews at the likes of Google, FB, etc.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  That's baffling to me too. There are kids over at /r/csmajors who haven't had this many interviews with this array of companies at this caliber.
taytus 6y ago
>Your writing is not strong Followed by >Your applying to those companies instead of "you are" or "you're" Cut him some slack.
- komaromy 6y ago
  If you read the rest of the sentence GP was correct
- SethKinast 6y ago
  "applying" is a gerund so "your" as the possessive is correct.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jesterson 6y ago
> There is no reason anyone would currently hire you, unless you are personable and fun to talk to. Perhaps my personal bias, but for a long time I was under impression that tech roles companies are hiring people based on their capacity to actually do the job. It's not social studies for G's sake. Over the course of my life I've come across extremely talented people, who yea, do lack social skills , not putting fake smiles and whatnot. Few of them were the best hires I did.
- yarcob 6y ago
  > companies are hiring people based on their capacity to actually do the job I think that's what honkycat was trying to say. OP doesn't sound like someone who actually has the skills for a dev job. So the only way they could get a dev job was if they somehow appeared really likeable so they would be hired despite lacking the required skills. (In my experience socially awkward people don't have trouble finding jobs if they have the right skills. Every tech meetup I've been to there were loads and loads of socially awkward developers who worked at all kinds of tech companies. Lacking social skills is only an issue if you don't have any technical skills to make up for it.)
  - jesterson 6y ago
    > OP doesn't sound like someone who actually has the skills for a dev job. If you pardon me, I doubt either of us have the senses to judge someone's capacity for dev job. He may not be very lucid at explanations, but it doesn't allow us to measure his dev capacity. Hopefully you'd agree we need slightly more to evaluate that.
    - hannasanarion 6y ago
      The point being made is the lucidity of explanation is part of the dev job. We aren't all just code monkeys, typing out programs for 8 hours straight every day. Being able to design, describe, explain, and critique in a way that doesn't make everyone at your company resent you is far more important than any dev hard skill.
    - 6y ago
exdsq 6y ago
I really dislike the suggestion that someone who didn't attend college is therefore unable to write. - "i" should be "I" - "You are still young, plenty..." should be "You are still young, with plenty..." - "would currently hire you," shouldn't have a comma - "entry level", "dead end", and "world famous" should all be hyphenated - "AAA games at an..." should be "AAA games in an..." etc...
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  > I really dislike the suggestion that someone who didn't attend college is therefore unable to write. That's not what he said. He suggested that someone who doesn't write well probably didn't attend college.
  - exdsq 6y ago
    > Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Maybe you're right but this is how I read it. Alice's writing is not strong -> Alice did not attend college. therefore Bob's writing is strong -> Bob did attend college.
    - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
      You just fell into a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent On the other hand, what the other user deducted was: * If you attend college -> You probably end up writing properly * OP doesn't write properly -> He probably didn't attend college Which is a proper logical deduction rule called modus tollens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens
      - exdsq 6y ago
        Fair enough! Happy to be proved wrong :)
      - atuladhar 6y ago
        I apologize in advance for nitpicking, but since this sub-thread is about usage: it should be "deduced" not "deducted."
aiisjustanif 6y ago
> Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. > Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. Such irony.

dcolkitt 6y ago

> Your writing is not strong, I don't know. I think he has pretty decent writing. Kinda reminds me of William Gibson. It may be stylistically unusual, but it's definitely better than the median SWE. At least in terms of clearly conveying his thoughts.

kyawzazaw 6y ago
I don't have much experience but that begs me the question, how bad were the SWEs you were working with that had even poorer communication tone than this person.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  I agree, I understood his point and the emotions he's probably feeling as it's an HN post, but so many red flags brings up some significant disconnect in the expectations he had of the audience. I hope he's able to get some good advice from this thread, he seems bright.
onlyfortoday2 6y ago
exactly... his writing is fine.
stevenhuang 6y ago
The writing is disjointed and does not easily flow. It's too curt and while that's alright for a casual i.e., HN audience, if that's how one communicates in other contexts there will be miscommunication.
- lkm93 6y ago
  And you just used "i.e." incorrectly. Congratulations. Hey snakedoctor! You're probably not a sociopathic, autistic, illiterate narcissist like everyone here is telling you. For one, your writing is just fine, and beyond that any of your bad decisions can simply be explained by youth and (understandable) desperation. I would suggest staying away from HN for life advice. People here might have some money but, aside from that, they are mostly low-intelligence failures.
urda 6y ago
The entire post flows awkwardly and feels more like an angry ramble than a coherent thought process was applied. This coupled with being a dropout. quitting job after job, and basically phising executives for attention makes this candidate a high risk hire and is not worth the time. Poster: You will need to extend your hard skills and demonstrate why a group should take the risk of your background on. It may be brutally honest, but the world is tough.
- bawolff 6y ago
  In fairness, by the time someone makes a forum post like this, they are probably at the frustrated angry rant stage.
  - urda 6y ago
    Alas, this is not an acceptable cover or excuse for this behavior.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      It wouldn't be good as a cover letter, but as far as social media forum posts, its totally fine.
      - coagmano 6y ago
        You are both entirely right. It's hard to judge their writing without seeing their resume and/or cover letter
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
Kluny 6y ago
I wouldn't hire William Gibson tbh.
atoav 6y ago
What is lacking however (and what seems to impact the opinion of many here negatively) is the total lack of self reflectivity. E.g. the previous jobs at the 3 big companies. Why did OP stop working there? Who ended the contract and why? If OP quit themselves, we lack any reason to understand why and whether this was a good idea in hindsight. Similar situation with the spoofing thing: this is an incredibly daring thing to do. A very self reflective person might ask themselves question like: "Maybe that was a mistake? How did the other side perceive this?" — especially after a rejection. With OP I get two vibes: 1. The issues that lead to them not getting the job they deserve are external. For OP it is out of the question that their behaviour/path they took in the world could have to do with how they are judged. From what I read there is no really rational ground for this confidence. 2. Instead of asking how to change the perception the other side has of them, OP seems to be more interested in the question how they can exploit their way into the position they think they deserve, without putting the leg work and trustbuilding into it. Technically and stylistically the writing is okay, it just seems to be written from the perspective of someone who didn't follow through on reflecting their own position in the job market and their own flaws when it comes to human interaction.
- wwn_se 6y ago
  Totally agree, combined with the fact that op seems to focus on big tech giants that are generally hard to get in to is a big red flag. My advise is to find a smaller company in a "boring field" (think local schools, manufacturing and retail not google/apple) and try to get the most entry level job that's still gives hands on programming / sysadmin experience. Many small help desks let juniors have small side projects improving something specific for example.

georgeecollins 6y ago

I agree but I would cut the OP some slack on the writing for a forum post. I know I have dashed off things here that could use some proof reading. But the gist of what you are saying makes sense to me. Going back to college seems like a good idea as a general direction.

sombremesa 6y ago
The GP has put a "your" instead of "you're" in (almost) the very next sentence, so you don't even need to point to your own mistakes to illustrate your point...
- komaromy 6y ago
  > The GP has put a "your" instead of "you're" in (almost) the very next sentence Correctly so
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- bawolff 6y ago
  I think GP might be a bit hard on writing style. I know plenty of succesful software engineers with poor writing abilities, and realistically my own are far from great. However your vs you're is the type of grammar mistake that really does not matter. Nobody is going to be confused by it. Writing structure is much more important. Edit: also looking back, GP used your correctly, so wut?
- lolinder 6y ago
  That was my initial reaction, but the "your" is actually correct there: > Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The clause "applying to..." is possessed by "your".
  - jiofih 6y ago
    Or, more directly, “your applying [...] is unrealistic”.

pcthrowaway 6y ago

> i can tell you did not attend college. I minored in English, and OP writes better than most of the English majors I was in writing workshops with. edit: To elaborate, this was at a local university in a U.S. city where 70% of the population were native English speakers. None of the people in my writing workshops were ESL.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I remember the largest contribution I provided my senior project for my bachelor's degree was correcting group members' usage of there/their/they're. Definitely can confirm college does not mean one can write.

snakedoctor 6y ago

Not to be argumentative. But yes, I did attend college. Send me a email, and I'll send you an email from my college email address (Hasn't been deactivited yet). I can send you my college transcript if that helps.. Well, I did get hired by IBM as a programmer so... I've contributed to a GNU open source project.. So I feel that I am qualifed for a entry level developer/SecEng/Security Analyst role. I went above my bosses head because they did not remedy the issue, and weren't going to.. The SVP guy that I did contact told me that would be willing to vouch for me that I did find a security vuln etc. He was actually quite receptive. I shouldn't of even had to, or felt like I had to go above my bosses head. There should've been a security email I could've emailed. That was at EA. At Amazon I emailed the VP in charge of the anti-fraud system since it might've taken longer for the blue team to send it to the right folks. But yeah, I do agree with you slighty on that.

klodolph 6y ago
Not trying to argue either. Contributing to an open-source project is a very different kind of activity from being a member of a team at a company. Programming is only half the job.
chillfox 6y ago
The problem now is that you likely can't use either of those managers that you went over the heads of as references for future jobs (they may not say nice things).
maroonblazer 6y ago
When responding to a comment that asserts your writing is not strong you'd want to read, re-read, and re-re-read your reply to ensure it is well written. You seem to have not done that, which lends credence to the parent's comment. My take is you seem to have an inflated sense of your abilities. I've interviewed people who share this trait and it's a turn off unless they have a portfolio of work to back it up. Perhaps try taking a more humble approach. Ask lots of questions as to what/where they need help. If they align with your experience then share concrete examples of how you've helped others in those same situations. If you haven't, make note of the challenges and see if you can identify patterns across interviews. This would provide hints as to what skill-building you could focus on in the interim. Good luck!

tempestn 6y ago

Given the relative lack of experience and lack of education I'm wondering how OP managed to get interviews at the likes of Google, FB, etc.

kyawzazaw 6y ago
That's baffling to me too. There are kids over at /r/csmajors who haven't had this many interviews with this array of companies at this caliber.

taytus 6y ago

>Your writing is not strong Followed by >Your applying to those companies instead of "you are" or "you're" Cut him some slack.

komaromy 6y ago
If you read the rest of the sentence GP was correct
SethKinast 6y ago
"applying" is a gerund so "your" as the possessive is correct.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jesterson 6y ago

> There is no reason anyone would currently hire you, unless you are personable and fun to talk to. Perhaps my personal bias, but for a long time I was under impression that tech roles companies are hiring people based on their capacity to actually do the job. It's not social studies for G's sake. Over the course of my life I've come across extremely talented people, who yea, do lack social skills , not putting fake smiles and whatnot. Few of them were the best hires I did.

yarcob 6y ago
> companies are hiring people based on their capacity to actually do the job I think that's what honkycat was trying to say. OP doesn't sound like someone who actually has the skills for a dev job. So the only way they could get a dev job was if they somehow appeared really likeable so they would be hired despite lacking the required skills. (In my experience socially awkward people don't have trouble finding jobs if they have the right skills. Every tech meetup I've been to there were loads and loads of socially awkward developers who worked at all kinds of tech companies. Lacking social skills is only an issue if you don't have any technical skills to make up for it.)
- jesterson 6y ago
  > OP doesn't sound like someone who actually has the skills for a dev job. If you pardon me, I doubt either of us have the senses to judge someone's capacity for dev job. He may not be very lucid at explanations, but it doesn't allow us to measure his dev capacity. Hopefully you'd agree we need slightly more to evaluate that.
  - hannasanarion 6y ago
    The point being made is the lucidity of explanation is part of the dev job. We aren't all just code monkeys, typing out programs for 8 hours straight every day. Being able to design, describe, explain, and critique in a way that doesn't make everyone at your company resent you is far more important than any dev hard skill.
  - 6y ago

exdsq 6y ago

I really dislike the suggestion that someone who didn't attend college is therefore unable to write. - "i" should be "I" - "You are still young, plenty..." should be "You are still young, with plenty..." - "would currently hire you," shouldn't have a comma - "entry level", "dead end", and "world famous" should all be hyphenated - "AAA games at an..." should be "AAA games in an..." etc...

benhurmarcel 6y ago
> I really dislike the suggestion that someone who didn't attend college is therefore unable to write. That's not what he said. He suggested that someone who doesn't write well probably didn't attend college.
- exdsq 6y ago
  > Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Maybe you're right but this is how I read it. Alice's writing is not strong -> Alice did not attend college. therefore Bob's writing is strong -> Bob did attend college.
  - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
    You just fell into a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent On the other hand, what the other user deducted was: * If you attend college -> You probably end up writing properly * OP doesn't write properly -> He probably didn't attend college Which is a proper logical deduction rule called modus tollens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens
    - exdsq 6y ago
      Fair enough! Happy to be proved wrong :)
    - atuladhar 6y ago
      I apologize in advance for nitpicking, but since this sub-thread is about usage: it should be "deduced" not "deducted."

aiisjustanif 6y ago

> Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. > Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. Such irony.