4 ms·

You'll miss out on a whole range of engineers that have a life outside of work (which also brings some balance and maturity to the job), and therefore have no t

by trhoad 5y ago

You'll miss out on a whole range of engineers that have a life outside of work (which also brings some balance and maturity to the job), and therefore have no time (or inclination) to groom a public presence on the internet. Raising a family, going cycling, volunteering, reading books - these are all more valuable insights into a candidate for me, more so than your retweets.

sevagh 5y ago
"Why would you make a good candidate for this position?" "I actually wrote a popular open-source app that-" "Shh... do you ride a bicycle? And do you raise children?"
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  I think this is a bit of an obtuse take. Doing non-coding things can give one skills that are useful in a software engineering role. Soft-skills like writing or public speaking, organisational skills, etc. Having an outlet that's not related to your job helps keep your mind sharp and fresh when it comes to work, too. Less chance of burnout if programming isn't 100% of what you do within and outwith work. If you deal with end-users, having a social life that involves non-technical people is a bonus too. Helps one to maintain an open-mind.
puppet-master 5y ago
Folk post this on every thread as if denying the effect somehow makes it go away. As both a candidate and hiring manager, the effect is very real and it is folly to ignore it. As a candidate, I landed a FANG job early in my career almost exclusively on the basis of my (poor quality) tech blog attracting the attention of a recruiter. As a hiring manager, I've dumped all resumes for a position and practically begged an extremely young (barely legal) candidate to interview and work for me on any terms just based on the strength of the passion found in their resume and web site. Simon's article is expressly about how little work is required to exploit this effect. You can still have a life outside of work while presenting the appearance of being passionate about what you do during work, it's really not hard.
- sdevonoes 5y ago
  > while presenting the appearance of being passionate about what you do during work Why would anyone want this? It's fake. Let's try to keep the IT world free of as much BS as we can please. Don't follow this nonsense trends.
  - obedm 5y ago
    Why? You don't need to be passionate about your work to be a great employee. Many days I don't feel like working and I'm not motivated. But I still do (I think) a great job and try my best. Passion is bullshit. Passion is useful in some cases, but it's not requirement to do a great job.
    - xenocratus 5y ago
      I think the parent comment was more about the "fake" than about the "passion" - as in, don't fake something for the sake of getting a job, whatever that something is.
    - ramesh31 5y ago
      >Passion is bullshit. Passion is useful in some cases, but it's not requirement to do a great job. I strongly disagree. Maybe for other professions, sure. But to write great software requires passion. Showing up and doing the bare minimum leads to the garbage software that proliferates the world today. Not that that really matters to the individual; if you're doing what's asked of you and nothing more, then more power to you for finding a good work life balance. But you simply cannot produce top quality software without being passionate about it.
      - obedm 5y ago
        Sucking at what you do != not being passionate. Passionate people can also suck at their jobs. I did some terrible things when I was inexperienced. There's nothing special about software. It's like asking the builder of your house how passionate they are about building houses. What I care about is how professional and experienced they are, not their passion.
simonw 5y ago
From my article: > The vast majority of candidates have little to no evidence of creativity in public at all. The same is true for many of the best engineers I have worked with. > As a hiring manager, this means you have to learn how to source candidates and interview effectively: you don’t want to miss out on a great engineer just because they spent all of their energy making great products for prior employers rather than blogging, speaking and coding in public.
- earthboundkid 5y ago
  People on Reddit were making the same complaints, even when I expressly wrote "It’s not a must have, but if you do have it, it’s a leg up." I think people are just rationalizing why they don't need to do anything, so they don't actually read the text of the articles/comments and just project what they want it to mean.

by trhoad 5y ago

sevagh 5y ago

"Why would you make a good candidate for this position?" "I actually wrote a popular open-source app that-" "Shh... do you ride a bicycle? And do you raise children?"

dkdbejwi383 5y ago
I think this is a bit of an obtuse take. Doing non-coding things can give one skills that are useful in a software engineering role. Soft-skills like writing or public speaking, organisational skills, etc. Having an outlet that's not related to your job helps keep your mind sharp and fresh when it comes to work, too. Less chance of burnout if programming isn't 100% of what you do within and outwith work. If you deal with end-users, having a social life that involves non-technical people is a bonus too. Helps one to maintain an open-mind.

puppet-master 5y ago

Folk post this on every thread as if denying the effect somehow makes it go away. As both a candidate and hiring manager, the effect is very real and it is folly to ignore it. As a candidate, I landed a FANG job early in my career almost exclusively on the basis of my (poor quality) tech blog attracting the attention of a recruiter. As a hiring manager, I've dumped all resumes for a position and practically begged an extremely young (barely legal) candidate to interview and work for me on any terms just based on the strength of the passion found in their resume and web site. Simon's article is expressly about how little work is required to exploit this effect. You can still have a life outside of work while presenting the appearance of being passionate about what you do during work, it's really not hard.

sdevonoes 5y ago
> while presenting the appearance of being passionate about what you do during work Why would anyone want this? It's fake. Let's try to keep the IT world free of as much BS as we can please. Don't follow this nonsense trends.
- obedm 5y ago
  Why? You don't need to be passionate about your work to be a great employee. Many days I don't feel like working and I'm not motivated. But I still do (I think) a great job and try my best. Passion is bullshit. Passion is useful in some cases, but it's not requirement to do a great job.
  - xenocratus 5y ago
    I think the parent comment was more about the "fake" than about the "passion" - as in, don't fake something for the sake of getting a job, whatever that something is.
  - ramesh31 5y ago
    >Passion is bullshit. Passion is useful in some cases, but it's not requirement to do a great job. I strongly disagree. Maybe for other professions, sure. But to write great software requires passion. Showing up and doing the bare minimum leads to the garbage software that proliferates the world today. Not that that really matters to the individual; if you're doing what's asked of you and nothing more, then more power to you for finding a good work life balance. But you simply cannot produce top quality software without being passionate about it.
    - obedm 5y ago
      Sucking at what you do != not being passionate. Passionate people can also suck at their jobs. I did some terrible things when I was inexperienced. There's nothing special about software. It's like asking the builder of your house how passionate they are about building houses. What I care about is how professional and experienced they are, not their passion.

simonw 5y ago

From my article: > The vast majority of candidates have little to no evidence of creativity in public at all. The same is true for many of the best engineers I have worked with. > As a hiring manager, this means you have to learn how to source candidates and interview effectively: you don’t want to miss out on a great engineer just because they spent all of their energy making great products for prior employers rather than blogging, speaking and coding in public.

earthboundkid 5y ago
People on Reddit were making the same complaints, even when I expressly wrote "It’s not a must have, but if you do have it, it’s a leg up." I think people are just rationalizing why they don't need to do anything, so they don't actually read the text of the articles/comments and just project what they want it to mean.