3 ms·

There's a lot of truth in this comment. Being able to gauge the interest of the people you're presenting to, and adjusting accordingly, is obviously going to be

by ajxs 5y ago

There's a lot of truth in this comment. Being able to gauge the interest of the people you're presenting to, and adjusting accordingly, is obviously going to benefit you in any situation too. It's a good idea to focus on keeping things relevant. In my defense, in this case the instructions were very open ended. They wanted projects I was particularly proud of, and left the scope very wide. Regarding gauging my suitability for "cog" work: Without wanting to sound arrogant, I don't think it's really that remarkable a feat to memorise the semantics of modern enterprise tools (maybe only a great feat of patience). I can't imagine why anyone would want to hear about all the ORMs I've used, or what Java/Python/Node/<insert tech here> libraries I've used over the years. That stuff is already in my resume. I think it's probably a better wager to risk boring the person looking to hear all about which new Java features you've used, rather than to risk boring the interviewer looking for genuinely interesting passion projects.

sangnoir 5y ago
> Regarding gauging my suitability for "cog" work: Without wanting to sound arrogant, I don't think it's really that remarkable a feat to memorise the semantics of modern enterprise tools That is not arrogant at all. However, I think there is room for pride in enterprise projects beyond memorizing specific libs. You can be proud of turning out a solution under pressure, or solving a seemingly-intractable problem creatively, or even a technically simple solution that improved your/user's lives. One of the most high-impact things I've done in my career was to implement a CSV export feature in an afternoon, without being prompted, saving my colleagues many hours of work per week - they were delighted and I'm yet to tip that. Interviewers are not always looking to be dazzled by technical brilliance (which is a plus), but you can show many other attributes: grit, patience, creativity, curiosity. I think your side-projects exhibit all 4 attributes, but interviewers are fallible, and it's your role to figure out which attributes are desirable for the role and weave them into your answers.

by ajxs 5y ago

sangnoir 5y ago

> Regarding gauging my suitability for "cog" work: Without wanting to sound arrogant, I don't think it's really that remarkable a feat to memorise the semantics of modern enterprise tools That is not arrogant at all. However, I think there is room for pride in enterprise projects beyond memorizing specific libs. You can be proud of turning out a solution under pressure, or solving a seemingly-intractable problem creatively, or even a technically simple solution that improved your/user's lives. One of the most high-impact things I've done in my career was to implement a CSV export feature in an afternoon, without being prompted, saving my colleagues many hours of work per week - they were delighted and I'm yet to tip that. Interviewers are not always looking to be dazzled by technical brilliance (which is a plus), but you can show many other attributes: grit, patience, creativity, curiosity. I think your side-projects exhibit all 4 attributes, but interviewers are fallible, and it's your role to figure out which attributes are desirable for the role and weave them into your answers.