4 ms·

> The side project myth is getting out of control. Most recruiters and hiring managers will never even open your GitHub profile. I once interviewed someone who

> The side project myth is getting out of control. Most recruiters and hiring managers will never even open your GitHub profile. I once interviewed someone who listed authorship of a paper on his résumé. I skimmed it and, curious, asked a question about it in the interview. He looked surprised and told me I was the only person who'd ever even mentioned it.

mattmcknight 5y ago
Maybe it's because I am hiring in data science, but that's the first place I go to in order to be able to ask deeper questions about what someone knows about. There are some interesting aspects of co-authorship though. A few years ago, I ran into a guy who did not understand the key aspects of a network security paper where he was the primary author. As I kept asking him about, he admitted he didn't know much about the topic!
- wirrbel 5y ago
  I didn't do much of research and went straight away into employment. But my wife did and ended up in a bunch of papers in the co-authors just for helping out with a small part of the stuff (sometimes she really was surprised when she found out). So in a way one cannot expect her to know every detailed corner of the papers she has co-authored.
  - mattmcknight 5y ago
    That's why I mentioned the person as being the primary author.
res0nat0r 5y ago
Most interviewing I've been involved with from large FAANG companies to smaller IT shops basically are just running around with their heads cut off when it comes to interviews. They get resumes from HR, skim them to see if the person is even in the right ballpark, cc: the team asking "yes/no?", then proceed to schedule an interview whenever everyone on the invite list has an open slot. Everyone then proceeds to examine said resume closer ~10 mins prior to the meeting when their email pings them that they have an upcoming interview scheduled.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  This was one of the most fascinating things when I joined the workforce. Schoolteachers all seemed prepared, the world was all neatly scheduled, and they claimed that the real world was even more strict about things. The most wrong thing I have been told about adulthood. Doing homework at the last minute is hardly just a kids thing.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I'm in my mid 30s. High school—in which I was not, notably, bullied or anything like that—was the most stressful, mentally-unhealthy, and busiest part of my life, to be sustained for more than a few weeks in a row. The only thing that's even come close is having multiple young kids at once, plus a job, and that's still not as bad. College was a vacation. Meanwhile, adults were telling me it was the best time of my life, or that if I was stressed out and struggling now, just wait until I got to the "real world". LOL, WTF? The real world is so much easier and less demanding. Even the couple times over Summers or early on when I worked low-wage unskilled jobs, it was easier and less stressful. All high school did was give me mental problems and a decade of nightmares.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Yep. I do so much less work now that I am out of high school. I work fewer hours. Deadlines are less strict. Protocol is less strict. Granted, I went to a pressure filled high school, but nothing came close to being as demanding as that, even engineering school.
      - handrous 5y ago
        I think the main problem with high school is that it wastes an absolute shitload of time. About 8 hours of your day shot actually in school, most of which is extremely low value or idle, and then (in my case, at what I think was a pretty middle-of-the-road school) 60+ minutes of homework on top of that every single day, which you're to do after you're already mentally beat from the intense boredom and "pay attention at all times or get in trouble" atmosphere of the rest of the day, with no option to defer it until you don't feel quite as much like your brain is running out through your ears. As a staunch advocate of teaching the humanities and someone who thinks the "what k-12 education needs is math education that looks more like what the 0.1% of people who are math nerds wish they'd been taught" folks are dead wrong, I still think high schools ought to re-consider having every class be the same length, and maybe cut some of their social studies and history entirely (because it's almost never well-taught enough to be worthwhile) so the homework portion of mid- and high-level math classes can be brought into the school day proper. It'd be a much better use of time, and I think having a teacher available for questions and guidance during "homework" time would do wonders for math comprehension and test scores. Though how schools would justify giving their coaches full teacher salaries without as many history and social studies classes for them to teach, is an open question.
w0m 5y ago
time dependent; i try and spend an hour pre-interview skimming any projects/papers in prep. "Why did you do X?" even when it's a high level/simple question gets the person talking well I think.

mattmcknight 5y ago

Maybe it's because I am hiring in data science, but that's the first place I go to in order to be able to ask deeper questions about what someone knows about. There are some interesting aspects of co-authorship though. A few years ago, I ran into a guy who did not understand the key aspects of a network security paper where he was the primary author. As I kept asking him about, he admitted he didn't know much about the topic!

wirrbel 5y ago
I didn't do much of research and went straight away into employment. But my wife did and ended up in a bunch of papers in the co-authors just for helping out with a small part of the stuff (sometimes she really was surprised when she found out). So in a way one cannot expect her to know every detailed corner of the papers she has co-authored.
- mattmcknight 5y ago
  That's why I mentioned the person as being the primary author.

res0nat0r 5y ago

Most interviewing I've been involved with from large FAANG companies to smaller IT shops basically are just running around with their heads cut off when it comes to interviews. They get resumes from HR, skim them to see if the person is even in the right ballpark, cc: the team asking "yes/no?", then proceed to schedule an interview whenever everyone on the invite list has an open slot. Everyone then proceeds to examine said resume closer ~10 mins prior to the meeting when their email pings them that they have an upcoming interview scheduled.

MattGaiser 5y ago
This was one of the most fascinating things when I joined the workforce. Schoolteachers all seemed prepared, the world was all neatly scheduled, and they claimed that the real world was even more strict about things. The most wrong thing I have been told about adulthood. Doing homework at the last minute is hardly just a kids thing.
- handrous 5y ago
  I'm in my mid 30s. High school—in which I was not, notably, bullied or anything like that—was the most stressful, mentally-unhealthy, and busiest part of my life, to be sustained for more than a few weeks in a row. The only thing that's even come close is having multiple young kids at once, plus a job, and that's still not as bad. College was a vacation. Meanwhile, adults were telling me it was the best time of my life, or that if I was stressed out and struggling now, just wait until I got to the "real world". LOL, WTF? The real world is so much easier and less demanding. Even the couple times over Summers or early on when I worked low-wage unskilled jobs, it was easier and less stressful. All high school did was give me mental problems and a decade of nightmares.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Yep. I do so much less work now that I am out of high school. I work fewer hours. Deadlines are less strict. Protocol is less strict. Granted, I went to a pressure filled high school, but nothing came close to being as demanding as that, even engineering school.
    - handrous 5y ago
      I think the main problem with high school is that it wastes an absolute shitload of time. About 8 hours of your day shot actually in school, most of which is extremely low value or idle, and then (in my case, at what I think was a pretty middle-of-the-road school) 60+ minutes of homework on top of that every single day, which you're to do after you're already mentally beat from the intense boredom and "pay attention at all times or get in trouble" atmosphere of the rest of the day, with no option to defer it until you don't feel quite as much like your brain is running out through your ears. As a staunch advocate of teaching the humanities and someone who thinks the "what k-12 education needs is math education that looks more like what the 0.1% of people who are math nerds wish they'd been taught" folks are dead wrong, I still think high schools ought to re-consider having every class be the same length, and maybe cut some of their social studies and history entirely (because it's almost never well-taught enough to be worthwhile) so the homework portion of mid- and high-level math classes can be brought into the school day proper. It'd be a much better use of time, and I think having a teacher available for questions and guidance during "homework" time would do wonders for math comprehension and test scores. Though how schools would justify giving their coaches full teacher salaries without as many history and social studies classes for them to teach, is an open question.

w0m 5y ago

time dependent; i try and spend an hour pre-interview skimming any projects/papers in prep. "Why did you do X?" even when it's a high level/simple question gets the person talking well I think.