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It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

• willemh 3y ago
  This rings true for me anecdotally. The last time I was looking for a job I struggled to land even a phone screening. But then I posted about a small project on my blog and LinkedIn and I had a hiring manager call me the next day with a gig that worked well for both of us.
• nitwit005 3y ago
  The act of taking a serious look at people's github repos, blogs, or whatever else, appears fairly unusual. I've asked.
  • notimetorelax 3y ago
    GitHub can be faked by taking work of others. When screening there’s no time to investigate each artifact. It’s nice if someone has a github repo, but it’s by no means the deciding factor.
    • dieselgate 3y ago
      Just happened to come across a coworkers GitHub today and really only looked at it for like 5 minutes. My take always were: “wow they have a LOT of recent activity”, “all the history of this repo is 8 years old”, and “didn’t know they coded with next|node|ruby” But it gave positive impressions
    • testtestabcdef 3y ago
      I'd say that's what the README page is for that you can create and gets shown at the top of your profile. I summarized my most important projects, the languages I know and some other simple facts about me. Mainly because i have a lot of "trash" on my gitlab which is just for personal use (I am always unsure if i should keep that public anyways)
    • josephg 3y ago
      Yeah. I often look at a candidate’s GitHub profile before an interview to get a sense of what they’re interested in - but mostly so I can ask interesting interview questions. “So, I saw on your GitHub you’ve made a few projects building terminal based UIs. What got you into that?” / “What are the big challenges in making modern terminal UIs? Why don’t more people do it?”
    • xena 3y ago
      Yeah, I have a fairly prolific GitHub portfolio so the first 5 minutes of most interviews are flipping to a random GitHub repo and asking me what is going on there. Makes me think they're trying to have me prove that I'm the author of it.
  • dieselgate 3y ago
    I’ve had an in person interview where we talked about them actually reading through my website. It was awkward to be honest but also cool they read it - was also strange to talk about “extracurriculars” during a technical interview. Always had a really really difficult time with how to present “myself” on a personal website - too many sides (code, personal preferences, opinions, etc) in one place. But whatever just send it and own it I guess - am still content selective though.
  • intellectronica 3y ago
    I always do and will spend as much time and attention as necessary to really understand what I'm looking at. A lot more than I do reading a CV.
  • testtestabcdef 3y ago
    I always linked my gitlab profile in all my applications. If I had any code on it which might be relevant to the position I also mentioned it in my cover letter. Barely anyone ever mentioned my gitlab projects or ask things about it. Just this one guy, he was confused that my master thesis was stating I handed it in in 2021 and asked why i didn't have a job yet. Thanks to this man I found out there is a typo on the cover of my thesis, because i handed it in 2022. It was kinda embarrassing, but I also felt joy that there are actually people out there who look at my stuff. The job didn't fit, but it was still a good experience. So yeah: Investing a few minutes in writing up a personal readme which gets shown on my gitlab was worth it. I can recommend!
    • intellectronica 3y ago
      You need to distinguish between filtering and interviewing. Most interviewers will not discuss your public work because they want to be unbiased and have the same discussion with multiple candidates without any other factors other than your performance in the interview itself influencing their assessment. They are doing the right thing. Where a portfolio can help you is in getting you from application to being invited to interview, which can be a challenge when there are many applications for a role. In some cases it might also influence a hiring manager's or hiring committee's decision as a tie-breaker between you and another candidate who did just as well as you did in interview, but I believe that's less common.
  • ZaoLahma 3y ago
    Anecdotal, but I've changed jobs 3 times in the last 6 years (oof) and in two of the interview processes they dug deep enough into my github (linked from the CV) to be able to ask tricky questions and have discussions. Heck, as part of the most recent interview process I was asked to provide a code walkthrough of a part of a personal project of mine for two developers from the company I was interviewing for. It was fun actually.
  • maurits 3y ago
    I host my own website. I can see from the logs that recruiters etc don't click on it, bar a rare exception.
  • aardvark179 3y ago
    Your blog, open source contributions, or conference talks are often the thing that gets you to the interview, but I’ve never been asked about them directly during an interview.
  • refurb 3y ago
    I can only speak from interviewing candidates at a big corp, but generally HR shortlists a bunch of candidates, schedules interviews then send me the resume about 16hr before the actual interview. I’ve never come across a candidate where anyone has dug into someone’s online presence prior to an interview. And to be honest, I’d rather speak to the person that read something they wrote. But again, that’s big corp so obviously other companies might do it differently.
  • loeg 3y ago
    That's why the article suggests screenshots and a README. Even that level is unusual, of course, but it doesn't hurt.
  • delecti 3y ago
    I really just don't know what to look for. Occasionally when looking at resumes I'll see a github link, and I never get any useful information from looking at it, so I mostly don't bother.
• goddessoflists 3y ago
  I'm curious about which other industries/roles this has worked for. Anyone here with examples?
• 000ooo000 3y ago
  IME in Aus, it's mostly recruiters, the kind who ask if I have experience with 'Jasons', who do the initial screening. I'm not sure I'd have much more luck getting past them with a substantial online presence behind me. On the other hand, I was recently referred by a friend for a role with the state gov. The HR person said my lack of experience with X hurt my chances. I passed this on to my friend and said thanks anyway. They later said their line manager scoffed at the HR person's comments. I'd be interested to hear if other Aus/NZ folk have similar experiences. Maybe the online presence works better in the US.
  • LouisSayers 3y ago
    Also worked in Aus - Melbourne and Sydney, as well as London. I have zero blogs, and I don't contribute towards open source. My github has random bits of code, a few coding exercises from other companies. What I do have though is a decent CV. When people say you need this or that, what they're actually saying is you need to show somehow that you're technically capable. There are other ways of doing that than just having a blog.
    • marcus_holmes 3y ago
      Agree. Also in Aus. HR doesn't give a shit about creativity. They need to see the TLA's on the CV that the tech nerds said they needed for the role. Also, is it me, or is this ridiculous? Accountants don't need to do any open-source accounting to prove their bona fides. Lawyers don't need to side-hustle some public defense cases to get respect. Civil Engineers don't build some free bridges to get hired. The employer working out if I have the technical skills I say I have is literally not my problem. They need to have a technical test or whatever they feel ticks that box for them. I'm happy to jump through whatever hoops they put in front of me (except a "take-home project" that will actually take more than an hour), but they have to put the hoops out. I'm not against open source, but I don't see that as a qualification either. It's a different thing from writing commercial code, with different skills and conditions. Plus, 90% of "projects" that I see on people's Git*b repos are forks or non-working code. I'm all for having my mistakes in public, but if I was to judge the average coder by their Git*b content I'd never hire any of them. Same for blogging - the ability to write a coherent, meaningful blog is great, and possibly a useful indication that the author can actually string a sentence together, but it's a different skill from what's required to write commercial code.
• gavinhoward 3y ago
  Unlike another top poster, this doesn't ring true for me. I have a blog with 170-ish posts. About half are technical. Three or four have gone viral on HN. The other half are personal, but I live in a place where people generally share the same values, so those other posts shouldn't be a problem. I've got a personal project. It's used in production and ships as part of the base install with FreeBSD and Mac OSX. It demonstrates high proficiency with C. It demonstrates careful work with every function documented in Doxygen comments and a development manual entirely designed to raise the bus factor to infinity. It also shows I've got fuzzing chops. I have other code. It's not complete, but I've got hundreds or thousands of hours in it, and it's to the same quality. And I can't get a job.
  • robbywashere_ 3y ago
    At what point in the job finding/interviewing process are you having trouble with? If you don’t mind me asking?
    • gavinhoward 3y ago
      It can be any part. Usually, the problem is that companies find out that I'm not good as a cog in a machine. That can happen at any time, but once they do, they're not interested.
      • Hermitian909 3y ago
        > Usually, the problem is that companies find out that I'm not good as a cog in a machine IMO this is the real problem - and it comes through in your blog posts. It's very risky to hire someone who can't be a cog, you need a lot of social proof that they're worth the risk.
        • hef19898 3y ago
          There is being a mindless cog, and honestly, at the extremes, nobody eants that except for the most mindless, easiest manual jobs. And there is being a professional who does his job as part of a team, follows some basic rules and still speaks his mind, but also knows when it just doesn't do any good. Try being the second, because at the other extreme of the mindless drone (which people are forcedbto be and hardly are by choice) is being a contrarian know-all who is just impossible to work with. Edit: From what others wrote about about your blogs, I think your ascertion that your personal views shouldn't pose a proboem are wrong. By that I don't mean having them is wrong, but being as outspoken about, lets put it mildly, potentionally controversial opinions in a borderline aggressive way is the problem. It would be an equal problem if we talked veganism as another, potentionally bad, example. Nobody wants to be called out by their co-worker during lunch for having a steak everytime. And nobody wants to talk about why a co-worker feels insulted for not being ablento bring a gun to the workplace. Edit 2: Paul Graham has one of his earlier articles that seems relevant: the one about keeping a low public profile. Is more relevant than ever, the more said profile deviates from the mainstream the more it can become a problem. GP is great example for this.
• BossingAround 3y ago
  When I applied recently to a new job, the interviewer(s) didn't even look at my github profile (or if they did, they might have clicked on one repo for 5s, and left). I know this based on the questions they asked me. Unless you highly curate your online presence for the hiring people (e.g. your blog only contains articles of interest to the interviewers in one place), I think nobody cares. The exception being is if your code/articles are in the top 5% of read articles, then I'd guess that speaks for itself without gaming the presentation.
  • vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Actually, I think the opposite can also happen. I've heard point-blank during a programming interview: "why do you want to work here...you're too creative."
  • ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
    I think you can track repo visits by putting tracking images in the readme
  • maccard 3y ago
    I would only ask if its directly relevant. If you have a fork of a few repos and a crud app, I don't really care. If you have something you want to draw attention to, do it in your resume with a link to the github profile.
  • john-tells-all 3y ago
    I strongly recommend creating a GitHub Profile README and spending some time on it, and get others to review it. Imagine the interviewer will skim it for 10 seconds before your interview -- your personal README matters! They are unusual so you'll stand out. On mine I list three attributes that make me a great, and unique, worker for the jobs I'm looking for. Go ahead and be grandiose here -- the point is to start a conversation! https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-profile/customizing-your-profile/managing-your-profile-readme https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/setting-up-an...
• napierzaza 3y ago
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• harlanji 3y ago
  I've mostly always believed this to be true and had some early confirmation in my past, greatest spike being around 2007. But for the past 5 years I've been consistently publishing original work and getting absolutely zero feedback and little engagement. My former personal network doesn't respond to my emails anymore, etc.. Might have to do with some defamation that happened in 2016 by an employer, but that shouldn't be surfacing until the reference check after I get an offer--unless I'm on black lists that are decently circulated. Another possibility is my reach is just limited when I post content with depth, as opposed to things that will get more engagement. People used to read my blog directly, which has been shut down for years. I'm open to the possibility that my presentation is just terrible, that my SEO needs work, stuff like that. Keeping all my web properties up and producing content up to modern standards has been pretty out of reach given my life circumstances... not complaining, just saying. My temp bosses are always happy with how good I wash dishes, anyway. I'll never stop publishing my tech work online, but I know it takes more than just publishing what I'm doing to stand out as a job candidate. I'd love to get an objective view about what else I'm lacking or penalized on almost as much as I'd like some good old fashioned Agape love, to help me want to check my email and notifications that I'm programmed to dread checking by now (usually due to non-responses to everything I send, if not trolls). Sorry that this may come off as negative. I've really had some success standing out and just publishing for most of my career, it's been really hard to figure out how to get out of the crater that it has become. I don't even talk like this that much, to anyone who wants to say my negativity pushes everyone away... I get that, too. Hard conversations are different than negativity; negativity is more like being a parasite, whereas I'm genuinely trying to find the issues which actually exist and fix them. Things I know I can fix: * Maintain properties and populate search engine/open graph fields for SEO * Produce thumbnails and editorialize headers * Increase my engagement in ways that are selected for
  • dehrmann 3y ago
    Took a quick look at your profile. It's rare that I look at projects when interviewing, but I'd rather see a complete, published open-source project than a dev sandbox. It's a signal that you can stick with something complex and drive it to completion. Alternatively, meaningful PRs to projects can be good because it shows you can work in someone else's codebase and build consensus. You're selling a notepad app for $30 with the disclaimer "This is the initial release and may contain bugs that lead to data loss, and so frequent backup and careful usage are suggested." I did a quick Google search for you on LinkedIn but didn't find anything. Everywhere you say you can take consulting gigs, but I'm not sure why I'd want you as a consultant. What expertise do you bring to the table?
• foldr 3y ago
  Few companies look at personal projects in my experience (UK). You can mention them in interviews for bonus points.
• exitb 3y ago
  As a person involved in hiring in my company, one of my goals is to remove biases for things that are not really related to the thing I'm evaluating, which is the ability to do a given job. There are valid reasons not to have an interest in publishing your coding or writing work, there are lots of great developers that don't do that, so I don't feel like this should make a difference.
  • TheRoque 3y ago
    The shouldn't in an ideal world, but on the other hand, it's obvious that it can. If you're looking for someone to perform a specific task, and you stumble on a blog post from him, or a project that showcases his passion and skill, it would be (IMO) pretty stupid to "remove the bias" and ignore this. At this point it's not even bias, it's just proof in front of your eyes that this guy has some knowledge and might be a good fit ( or whatever proof it is)
    • wildrhythms 3y ago
      It's because information exposed in blog posts can be used to bias or discriminate, either intentionally or unintentionally. Consider a hiring manager finding a blog post from a month ago about the candidate having a newborn child; now the hiring manager has been exposed to information that can be used to justify discrimination.
  • sneak 3y ago
    Being a great developer requires written communication skills as much as it requires software development skills. It's not bias to hire non-one-dimensionally. People are not cogs.
  • LanceH 3y ago
    There are valid reasons not to post code or blog. True for some. Posted code or a blog may demonstrate knowledge and capability in the subject area for the potential hire. Also true for some. Demonstrating professional skills shouldn't be discounted just because someone else doesn't. It absolutely should make a difference if it's relevant even other people have reasons for not doing the same. Hiring is selecting the right person and not selecting the wrong person. It is not about sorting all people 100% correctly into hire/no-hire groups. A blog with code can tell a lot about a person. Do they understand the material? Can they write coherently about it? Can they target an appropriate level of audience with that? Maybe these can't be answered just by reading the blog, but it gives a lot to discuss in the interview process. Some people want to have the exact same interview process between all people. People are different, though. Locking the interview down to a single process doesn't allow for the variety of skills out there to shine individually. If that avenue is through a portfolio or blog, it's fair game.
• tryfinally 3y ago
  Worked for me at the start of my programming career. I had a few Stack Overflow answers (few hundred karma) and a fairly barebones GitHub profile. I applied to a large local IT corporation. The person interviewing me (who was a team lead) simply assumed I have the skills necessary for an entry position and we pretty much skipped the technical part of the interview. (I ended up in a fairly fantastic team full of great engineers and coworkers. Turns out the guy who interviewed me was awesome at hiring.)
• TheCapeGreek 3y ago
  Other comments here mention there's no real time to look through actual code or a GH repo. I agree, however that's why I think it's better to focus on the other markers here - blog, community involvement, and so on. It doesn't have to be grandiose; just list it on your CV! You cover a few things this way. You show that you think beyond the terms of warming a seat, and can highlight particular ways you may fit a specific job. I've had several jobs/contracts that told me they think I'm a fit because of me listing my involvement with meetup hosting and how I've tailored my CV to highlight specific kinds of work that I'm interested to do more of (e.g. payment integrations). Like with dating or sales, it's kind of the same idea: you want to look specific instead of generic, in order to filter out jobs that would be a lukewarm-to-negative fit for you. If you have nothing to differentiate yourself, then start something and highlight it. For kicks and giggles I even have "Certified Log Home Builder" in my CV after taking a course on it.
  • JoshuaDavid 3y ago
    > For kicks and giggles I even have "Certified Log Home Builder" in my CV after taking a course on it. - Proficient in the use of log aggregation tools - Experience ensuring systems can stand up under heavy load - Skilled at operating within strict architectural constraints
• intellectronica 3y ago
  100%. Especially in a tough, competitive job market like today's, having a credible portfolio of work, published content, and external validation makes a huge difference. It can take a good candidate to the top of the list, and when that list is a few dozen great applications, that's critical. As a hiring manager I weigh a candidate's public presence at 10~15% of my initial decision, even more if it's exceptionally impressive. And I hear from other hiring managers that they view this similarly. If you have good academic qualifications and a great record of past work experience ... guess what, there are several other candidates with great academic qualifications and an impressive work experience. Having a strong portfolio of public work can be what distinguishes you and gets you the opportunity to be invited to interview. One important note: just having publicly available content isn't enough. It also has to be credible and impressive. Original articles that demonstrate deep expertise and are valuable to others. Serious codebase you wrote yourself or made significant contributions to. Real achievements on things like Kaggle competitions. I sometimes see people including a link to a "business card" type website with their photo and links to their social media or a blurb about themselves. That doesn't impress and won't make a difference.
  • existencebox 3y ago
    (Obvious disclaimer all views are my own and not my employer's) First, let me say that I don't disagree, pragmatically, with the truth of what you're saying, in terms of increasing your odds on the whole as a candidate. But that said, as another hiring manager, let me respectfully disagree with this as a strong hiring signal. I say this, to boot, as an engineer with an, in my experience, above average OSS contribution, research, and patent portfolio, although these things are a bit power-law-esque so obviously I'm nothing next to many. When I interview, I want to know you have a track record of high quality delivery, and are good for the skills you attest to. I can understand some folks looking at the public displays as a proxy to that, but I'd argue, at that point, indexing on the "public" part is orthogonal to what we're looking for it to display, and carries both false positives and negatives. To some degree we may be agreeing loudly here, where you'd say "well that's what them putting it in public is" but I'd worry that by caring about the public component vs. a more generalized examination of professionalism and accomplishment, we preclude folks who have no time or interest in curating that sort of profile. If I put myself into the absolute edge case of two candidates all things being equal but one seems to have also made a more visible portfolio of work, MAYBE, MAYBE that would move the needle in terms of establishing a degree of external validation, but I think I'd be looking _hard_ for other aspects to differentiate that would seem to have more direct applicability to our day-to-day needs, and am hard pressed to think of a time in the last few hundred interviews I've had to make such a choice without a stronger differentiator for any candidate above a very junior level.
• onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  People don't realise how easy it is to get to top 1% in most fields, if you are sufficiently intelligent (say 110-120). Most intelligent people don't get there because they are either not willing to do the work or don't know how honest work looks like or they put artificial barriers before themselves. And even if you are less intelligent you still can get there, you will just have to put in more work. I think of those, the ability to put in honest work is the biggest limitation of most people. I like to compare honest work to Allies fighting World War II -- doing whatever is necessary to win, wherever it leads you. No plan is stupid if it works, there is nothing shameful about trying and failing. There will be setbacks because life is not fair and on short time scales the rewards are never assured. But what makes winners different from losers is what they do in response. If they can persevere, through their setbacks, experience, hard work, the focus they put in they will gain the knowledge that lets them win on the long time scale. You lose only if you lose faith in yourself and quit.
  • intellectronica 3y ago
    True, and you don't even need to get to the top 1%. For many jobs, being in the top 20% for the relevant reference group (global, local, specialised, general) will make you the best candidate with a wide margin.
  • skybrian 3y ago
    You're using the word "easy" but I think what you describe only seems easy when you have the right attitude and few distractions. For many people, this is actually hard.
    • onetimeuse92304 3y ago
      "Easy" means it is just your decision whether you want to get it or not (well... most of the time... to get to 1% in most fields). I know if I can spend enough effort I can learn to reasonably play Irish flute, the only question is am I willing to put in the effort? Once I decided I really want to get something, the rest is relatively easy -- yes, that means resolve and the right attitude and some amount of consistent effort -- I have not said "easy" means "free". I have been in the top (say top 3-10) of a number of online games and had a lot of discussions with people who were at the top about what makes them different from all those other people who never reach the top. Most of the time the difference is people get stuck and they don't know how to unstuck themselves. They are not listening to advice. They are not honestly trying to understand what keeps them stuck, etc. That's a problem of attitude. I think training your resolve and the attitude is separate problem from achieving your goals, this is something many people would gain a lot from if they focused on it for a bit.
• fbrncci 3y ago
  You google my real name, and there’s a mountain of content I created. I’m an independent contractor and it’s been getting me short and long term work… all over the world as a web developer. I think it’s been the best thing I ever did.
• klrtyc 3y ago
  If each of one's blog posts is upvoted to the top at HN for unknown reasons, that may be true. If you are in the right clique and do minor work in an open source project, that may also be true, as long as you go along with the correct politics. So in that sense the title is correct and describes the sad world we live in.
  • wiseowise 3y ago
    How is that sad?
• mattigames 3y ago
  I have first hand experience of this being false, just a few months ago to stand out for a React open position for a company called Personio, I created a org chart that feel much snappier and friendly using React and CSS3 animations that the one the company is using in their main product (this one if you are curious https://github.com/Ivanca/personio-demo https://github.com/Ivanca/personio-demo ), I linked it in the cover letter and also tried reaching out some public email addresses of their recruiters but nothing, I got a generic rejection message. I have tried similar tactics before for some other positions I was highly interested in but nothing, it never works from what I can tell, the jobs I have gotten were all using my generic CV and not much else.
  • aembleton 3y ago
    How is that friendlier? Can I easily search for someone? Still its a cool demo.
    • mattigames 3y ago
      Its subjective, but I meant little usability things, like you can view anyone on the chain of command right in the bottom after their profile pic moves there, and the farther away from you in the chain of command it looks smaller so you can see them all without scrolling like you have to in the current org chart. Also the current one freezes a lot after clicking and this one doesn't, which is arguably non-userfriendly behavior.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  I really should work on polishing up my public appearance, but right now my job and personal life take up any creative energy I might have outside of work. I have a blog (multiple?), but posts are few and far between and I frequently regret publishing things. I barely go back to previous comments I leave on the internet / HN, afraid of what others might think. Maybe I should talk to someone about that <_<. I could be shadowbanned for all I know, come to think of it.
• user_named 3y ago
  I started doing talks this year to get better at speaking. Posted photos on LinkedIn and got an offer from an old acquaintance who saw it, for something related. Other than that, makes the day job mor fun and I became the 'expert' on the topic at eork
• buro9 3y ago
  First they need to look at your application / resume. Then they need to have questions, which triggers curiosity that has them looking for more. Only then does having a piece of content help you. Yes it helps, but it doesn't help as much as having a resume that suggests you're a potentially good match without oversharing why you're not a good match. A good resume raises questions that leads to a conversation. The resume matters more... but if all else is equal and candidates you're competing against also have great resumes, then content matters. You'd be very surprised at the lack of great resumes though.
  • quickthrower2 3y ago
    It could be the other way around: they downloaded your resume after reading your blog post.
    • lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
      Even small companies get hundreds of applications per job posting. How often do you think hiring managers go out hunting for resumes on blogs?
      • quickthrower2 3y ago
        1. Post a great blog post or series 2. 100k devs view it 3. One of them thinks “we are hiring and fed up if interviewing turkeys, how about this person who had demonstrated knowledge” 4. Internal email to hiring manager “i recommend calling this one, here is the CV…”
  • fardo 3y ago
    When you make stuff the order is usually the other way around - someone finds your work, then gets interested in the person behind it. If you make it easy for someone doing so to get in contact about job opportunities and make it clear you’re open to them, you’ll often start to get some.
  • rtparsons 3y ago
    Completely agree with this. Personal projects, blogs, etc are tools which can help pass barriers in the interview process. Normally these barriers are later in the process. One thing I haven't seen anyone touch on here is that I think this is more relevant early on in someone's career when there is less visible history on candidates.
• tr888 3y ago
  It shouldn't take any. This hiring attitude discriminates against (not an exclusive list) parents, people with caring responsibilities, and those that find "public creativity" difficult due to personality traits or medical issues. It cements the "tech bro" culture. It stifles diversity. Just hire people that can do the job you're paying them for. I don't ask my plumber to show me their blog posts.
  • fardo 3y ago
    > I don't ask my plumber to show me their blog posts. Yes, but you probably read his reviews online, compared his quotes with competitors in the space to pick one with a good reputation, and otherwise sought signals of competence. Blog posts are the very same thing, quickly verifiable, albeit potentially wrong, signals of skill and competence. > Just hire people that can do the job you're paying them for Speaking bluntly, this is what hiring people that can do the job looks like. Attacking those that take the effort to show they have that experience because others wouldn’t is tall poppy syndrome, and it neither improves the quality of the field nor actually helps those struggling that need more support so they can operate at the same level as others.
    • fnimick 3y ago
      I didn't know being a plumber that gets good reviews involves putting in a substantial amount of unpaid work.
      • wiseowise 3y ago
        All things equal, I’d rather hire plumber who has a blogpost where they tinker with some plumbing systems.
      • aembleton 3y ago
        Some make content for YouTube which gets them work.
      • fardo 3y ago
        It often quite literally will. Free quotes and inspections prior to work commencing, time potentially spent waiting for jobs to come in in which customer support and taking calls are essentially a pure unpaid cost center for the business, taking the time to answer customer questions wholly unrelated to the job potentially even after the job completed, a desire by customers to hear you say things like > hey, I saw your valve on blah was loose when it shouldn’t be, since I was there and it was an easy fix, tightened it for you as part of the job, no charge. And there are likely more, I’m not a plumber. If you are looking for it, you’ll find many cases of “free work is used as a tool to distinguish oneself, delight, and lubricate business”, and plumbing is no exception.
• 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  dance monkey, dance! anyone can plagiarise a github or a blog. you still need to speak to the person. you're just adding even more steps to what is already an insufferably bad experience. but adding more steps is something we love to do. every solution creating 10 new problems.
• Paianni 3y ago
  "build an audience on Twitter" That aged well.
  • xena 3y ago
    You can still build an audience on the fediverse.
• thom 3y ago
  Just a note for anyone who needs to hear it: you don’t even necessarily have to be a maintainer and have complete open source repos to show off. If your entire GitHub is you just forking libraries, fixing a bug or adding a feature, and then creating a somewhat tasteful PR then I find that extremely reassuring. It means you’re doing real work, experiencing pain, diagnosing the issue and fixing it. I do not need to see seventeen green badges at the top of a readme to be impressed.
• _mh56 3y ago
  I have 50+ public projects on Github. Some of them are live, have screenshots, proper documentation and such. Some of them gets stars or people reach out for support on these projects. Some of them I've advertised on Reddit etc and reached 100K+ views and a lot of upvotes in their respective Communities. I also have a substack which has reached top of HackerNews once. All this has netted me exactly ZERO opportunities till now. Thankfully, I'm doing Github and Substack as a hobby/learning so no expectations = no disappointment. But the author is deluded to think these things help. You might win the lottery and the right person might see your content at the right time. But it's better to just use this time to cram Leetcode and get a job.
  • AussieWog93 3y ago
    I got my first software engineering job only once I had a successful open source hardware/software product. Every interviewer asked about it, and it was the reason I got in the door despite not doing anything CompSci related.
  • tzekid 3y ago
    I think it's meant as an add-on to stand out when applying to a job. I'm quite Junior so I don't know if this applies to more senior positions, but in my experience when applying to jobs my Github page was always a point of discussion when I got an interview.
  • never_inline 3y ago
    Brother you're from India? The market is much more tough and much more dumb here. Due to competition, very few measures are competed upon very fiercely. Whatever applies in west doesn't apply here. I have had friends like you who did incredible projects and contributed to open source. The best of my friends have ended up in relatively good startups due to open source and projects, after lot of struggle. But on the other hand, I have seen absolutely incompetent morons who did Leetcode (or even cheated at it) and got a high life job. Scale ruins things I guess. This market is pathetically fucked.
  • simonw 3y ago
    I never said that having this stuff would get you the job offers. You still have to apply for the opportunities that are a good fit for you. At least in the companies I've worked for in the UK and the US it should help you make it past the first filter - the "I have a stack of candidates, which of these are worth setting up an initial phone interview with" phase.
• wilde 3y ago
  Hiring managers are looking for people like themselves. Simon is big on blogging and OSS so he looks for that. This type of bias is especially present at smaller companies where there isn’t much formal evaluation of hiring processes. Hell, some even amplify it with a “culture” interview. This post didn’t say “I’ve found that candidates with public work are more likely to pass the interview.” Just that he noticed that he’s biased and that could be a good way to get the interview. It’s unfair but if you want the job you could use this to your advantage.
• 91Jacob 3y ago
  Question to those who post about work they've done while employed at a large company - how much do you take into account employer confidentiality clauses? Is there a good 'rule of thumb' checklist of rules to tick away ahead of posting?
• Mizoguchi 3y ago
  I keep reading how bad and competitive the "job market" is today, but I haven't been able to find actual data on it. It's like people have this gut feeling that due to the recent layoffs at FAANG, no calls for interviews and the number of (likely mediocre) applications showing up in a job post in LinkedIn indicates the job market is extremely competitive. But is it? The entire job market? There's no doubt some companies and markets are beaten up but other are actually doing great and growing. So rather than invest time on blogging and creating repos why not focus on researching, identifying and learning about the industries that are actually hiring and acquiring new skills so that you can target them?
• spratzt 3y ago
  Complete rubbish. Most candidates nowadays are obliged to deal through low grade, poor quality recruiters. Demonstrating creativity to these morons is an absolute waste of time.
  • rewmie 3y ago
    Those "poor quality recruiters" only work with the data you give them. If you give them the same stuff everyone else is giving, what leads you to believe that they'll side with you? They naturally tend to go with those who help them justify their decision, and that's where that creativity enters the picture.
• somsak2 3y ago
  the bar for public creativity may be relatively low, but in my experience as a candidate, interviewer, and hiring manager, it really does not actually make a difference. i'm generally too busy to be looking into this kind of stuff. hell, i rarely read your whole resume. let's talk and see if there's something. outside of that it's just wasting time.
• jamilbk 3y ago
  This is great advice. The best evidence you can perform a job is demonstrating that you’ve done it in the past.
• joezydeco 3y ago
  Are you an embedded developer? Bring a show-and-tell to your next interview. Bring an example of something you've worked on. Doesn't have to be in a finished case. In fact, a raw PCB can be more effective. Make sure 1) the product has already been released to the public and 2) the hardware isn't stolen. Rig up a small power supply and find a way to light it up. Being able to drop that in front of an interviewer and explain the entire system front-to-back is a massive advantage over people that have listed random "projects" in their resume but don't have much more to say about it. Be honest about your contributions, don't give away anything proprietary, but be proud of the project and show some enthusiasm when you talk about it. That alone will get you 80% of the way to the job. I also keep a binder with a single page for every project I've done. Just a photograph and maybe 3-4 lines of text. Keep that off to the side. When an interviewer asks about a technology or idea that matches even a little you whip that book out and point to the page. Now you're showing and telling again. Super easy to put together and maintain over your career.
  • hoherd 3y ago
    This reminds me of one of my coworkers who was interviewing around for his next job. One company he was interviewing for had a website with public facing user profiles. My coworker found a SQL injection vuln and wrote a POC virus that would spread to any other account that was logged in while viewing an infected profile and took it with him to his interview, gave them the code, and showed them how they could fix it. He said they were really thankful for the information, but as he was retelling the story to us later we all talked about how that could have gone very badly.
    • intelVISA 3y ago
      Lucky for him but that kinda approach can go sideways for the 'candidate' very easily I fear.
    • beebmam 3y ago
      There's no way he found this without actually performing sql injection attacks. Not a good idea.
• thih9 3y ago
  To me, blogging for a better chance at being hired seems as good as “work for exposure”. It’s not all bad, and I see how it could be helpful and fun; still, it feels like something that shouldn’t be necessary.
  • sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Why? How else are people going to get to know you?
    • thih9 3y ago
      My preferred way is via the resume, it has all the relevant information, i.e. skills, achievements, experience or references.
• galoisscobi 3y ago
  This sounds like good advice. My current employer does not allow me to write technical blogs or have public git repos even if they’re unrelated to work and when done on my own time with my own resources. Sigh.
  • stakhanov 3y ago
    > My current employer does not allow me to write technical blogs or have public git repos even if they’re unrelated to work and when done on my own time with my own resources. Sigh. That sounds like overreach; I don't think an employer is within his rights to try to restrict what you do in your free time with your own resources and without infringing on your employer's legitimate claims to IP (copyright, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, etc.) This kind of overreach in contractual language and managerial posturing is somewhat common, driven by fears related to your exposure to your employer's IP, but the bark is worse than the legal bite here. I'm not a lawyer, but I still feel confident when saying that an employer wouldn't prevail in court, if they took legal action to enforce such restrictions on what you do outside of work.
    • galoisscobi 3y ago
      It does feel like overreach to me as well. It is a FAANG and they have great lawyers. I hope to never be in a legal kerfuffle with them but regardless I should read more about what they can enforce. The hilarious thing about their no open source policy is that they sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. Sometimes, they’ll hire someone with a very successful open source project, in the employment contract ask them to stop working on it, then part of the company depends on that software and when it breaks, it causes chaos because the maintainer now works at the company and had to stop working on that open source project that the company relies on.
• melenaboija 3y ago
  I love all these blog posts that will take you to the heaven of the $500K jobs with three easy steps. It is hard, period. Otherwise everybody would be there, and if the advice works then you will have to find something else as in any other market, gaps close.
  • _the_inflator 3y ago
    I agree. Simply ask Gauss. ;) Judging from my experience as business unit lead in an enterprise company, for every very high paying dev (VHPD) there is a mentor who supports this person. This is like in real life: no one promotes himself, you get pulled up. Usually there is a specific business case behind VHPDs - and someone with technical prowess, to understand the need behind it. The line between ignorance and support is thin: "Why pay someone so much money? We can have 4 people for the same amount. 4 are better than 1!"
  • loeg 3y ago
    The article doesn't promise a $500k job, just that public portfolios stand out vs candidates without a portfolio. I don't think it's an especially exotic or unbelievable claim.
    • porcupinepig 3y ago
      [dead]
    • yieldcrv 3y ago
      Exactly, to me its reading like “work life balance shouldn’t be penalized, going beyond will be rewarded. if you aren't interested in those benefits you should still be able to collect a paycheck at a static level, if you are it is accurate that you can get offers and counteroffers more easily”
  • barrenko 3y ago
    If you're in, you're probably lucky. Probably skilled, but lucky for sure.
  • horsawlarway 3y ago
• agentultra 3y ago
  It does work to build professional connections. A good number of my jobs came through people recognizing me from talks I've given, my writing, meetups, and working on open source projects. However it didn't help much in the interview process. I've never been in an interview where the interviewer looked at my profiles on various code hosting platforms, reviewed some of my pull requests before hand, and came into the room with a good idea of what I do and how I work. They will still ask the same pre-canned questions they are forced to ask and we're back to reversing linked lists and memoizing tree walking algorithms. It's good for getting to know folks which can help in finding places to apply to where you might already know some people. But I doubt it's going to make you stand out in the interview process itself. Update: That being said, I've been on the other side of the table and when I was the one setting up the interview process I made sure candidates knew that they could send over recent PRs they've made for us to review in order to bypass any coding exercises. I find it much easier to discuss the problem they were working on and seeing their solution is really helpful.
  • doctorpangloss 3y ago
    > I've never been in an interview where the interviewer looked at my profiles on various code hosting platforms I guess one thing Simon didn't consider is that as long as the vast majority of developers (let alone people) express no creativity, your interviewers won't either. > ...they could send over recent PRs As long as the cultural norm is NDA - better known as Not Doing Anything - it won't happen.
• simonw 3y ago
  I'm always surprised at how much push-back this one gets. The point I was trying to make here is that you DON'T need to be someone who spends every free moment blogging, writing open source code and so on. Stick up a few posts somewhere and leave them there, as a tiny piece of extra evidence that you're someone who knows how to do things. Maybe part of the problem is that I'm grossly under-estimating the amount of work involved in "post an interesting technical article to it once or twice a year" for people who don't already spend a lot of their time writing.
  • dleeftink 3y ago
    In spirit, I agree–spread your knowledge, far and wide. But making your voice heard and stand out from the crowd is no simple feat: we don't all have the luxury of Twitter following, a much subscribed RSS feed, a prominent domain name to spread the fruits of our hard work. The network effects that benefit early influencers are difficult to pierce, I find.
    • simonw 3y ago
      That's the trick here though: you don't need any distribution at all for this to work. You just need something you can link to from your resume, so the hiring manager can click through and see a tiny bit of evidence that you can talk about code or build a project.
      • dleeftink 3y ago
        I hope it'll pay off. In the mean time, how to keep motivated when much time is spent publicising to little public response? Asking for the proverbial friend.
  • OJFord 3y ago
    For me the barrier has been that I've never gotten around to setting the blog up. Often having ideas for (I think) a good post, but don't have the blog to post it to. Some of them get noted down in case I ever do. I do intend (as in, have been particularly intending recently) to do it, because I think then I would find it lower effort, I would do it, and that I would like that. We'll see, the list of things I've intended to do is long! I particularly like the style of (others') blog where you dive semi-deep on something semi-obscure to fix or do something, perhaps it's not your usual area, and then write up a nice explainer for the next searcher, or a note to self for the future. Explain it to someone who's never understood it before, while you still remember that perspective.
• xyzelement 3y ago
  The most basic competence signal is a good LinkedIn and resume. The problem is that if you don't know what good looks like, you don't know that your thing isn't good and you may not even know how to recognize someone who can review it for you. The question to strive for: "if someone doesn't know me or my work and my company at all, can they look at my resume and understand what I've done, why it's impressive: and why I am an interesting candidate?" As someone who sits on the other side of the table all the time, when someone has structured their LI/resume this way, it tells you they (1) cared to do it well (2) found a way to understand what's relevant and (3) found a way to implement it: those add up to a very strong signal layered on top of their technical skills. Someone will inevitably reply that you can be a great dev and a terrible writer and I guess that's true but it makes it so much harder for someone to "see through it" and hire you.
• melvinroest 3y ago
  I can confirm. I once created a project called Doodledocs. The reason was because I (still!) haven't seen a project that showed pen styluses pressure sensitivity in a web app. So I whipped up a collaborative drawing app where pressure sensitivity of the stylus was captured (if the stylus was capable of it). In the beginning of my career I did 100s of job interviews. However, in this case I only did a few and I'm sure I got the job because of it. Also, it was a lot of fun to try and create backend style type of functionality only by utilizing peer to peer! The hacking and reasoning required felt novel and fun. The project is here (it is currently not live): https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs
• Scubabear68 3y ago
  On blogging - I would add to the discussion, ask someone you trust their opinion of your writing. If you are a great or even good writer, this can be good advice. I’d you are not so good - this can backfire. I’ve seen a lot of CV’s with blog links that turned me off on the candidate immediately. Usually for more architecture type positions, not coding, because architects need good written comm skills.
• yieldcrv 3y ago
  > 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. say it louder for the tone deaf recruiters and hiring managers in the back
• firatkizilboga 3y ago
  I try do some sort of frontend for every project and case study a company sends me. I think it helped a lot until now and will help more in the future.
• alain94040 3y ago
  I’ve spent nearly twenty years blogging, giving talks and releasing open source code. [...] I’ve interviewed hundreds of people [...] The vast majority of candidates have little to no evidence of creativity in public at all Are we sure the author is not showing some unconscious bias by looking in others for traits he has (public creativity)? There is no particular reason why public creativity is linked to good engineers. It's one way to show good engineering, sure. But far from the only way. I could see some other hiring managers arguing the opposite: if you have time to write lightweight tech posts on your blogs, maybe you are not a great engineer who will solve my company's most difficult problems. That being said, especially for new grads, I strongly recommend showing something, anything beyond "I graduated from this university and here are the classes I took".
  • blitz_skull 3y ago
    He very specifically called out that this advice is if you’d like stand out from the crowd. I think there’s nothing wrong with unconscious bias and him simply calling this out. That being said, I see no reason this advice wouldn’t work on hiring managers with less experience blogging.
  • simonw 3y ago
    It's very much a conscious bias. That's why I also say: "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.".
  • avgDev 3y ago
    I developed complex systems that run businesses all by myself. During those projects I had no desire to do anything computer wise outside of work because I was challenged on daily basis. DevOps, setting up servers, building CI/CD, setting up environments, implementing different features, setting up databases, database design, learning ORMs, writing stored procedures, APIs, building the front end.....and the list goes on and on. Blogging takes time away from work. Some people like myself do not want to make their thoughts public because I value privacy. I also don't feel like I have anything much interesting to say. I just like getting "shit" done. I feel I'm capable of learning anything required to complete a task/job. Yet, I wouldn't fit his idea of someone who stands out. Then, again I don't really like working with people who show such extreme bias and are not open minded.
• sfg 3y ago
  A team I was on hired someone because I dug up an emulator he had written in the past (I think it was of some Nintendo console). I took a quick look at it, showed it to the other devs on the team, asked the candidate about it to check he really built it and understood it, and then we told the manager to hire him, if he passed the personality assessment. He hadn't even mentioned it on his CV as he worried it would look unprofessional. I got another person hired as I found a Android game she had written and pushed to the Play store. Again, I don't think she mentioned it on her CV. After looking at it and talking to her about it, I told management to hire her, if they found no issues in her as a person. In both cases they were outstanding at their job, relative to their level of seniority and pay. Both are very high up the list of people I'd happily work with again. It might not be fair to the candidates that didn't have projects (or had ones that I couldn't find), but it was a very effective way of getting amazing people. Which makes sense as examples of work are probably better than CVs and interviews for judging someones ability to do the job.
• easytiger 3y ago
  Alternatively I see people publishing their "creativity" as virtue signalling nothingness. I did a freelance job for someone and they asked to see a portfolio. I said I can't even divulge the nature of the projects I did for various banks let alone send you screenshots of it because me having screenshots would indicate a breach of contract. Ask me anything about the tech you want to implement. I got the gig. I've also seen "vibes" hiring of people with a good rep in various communities and it doesn't work. Those people are generally awful to work with and lack any desire to compromise
• drngdds 3y ago
  Maintaining an employer-friendly public persona seems pretty miserable if you like sharing opinions more controversial than programming language preferences. Or if your hobbyist tech interests skew in the anti-corporate or copyright-infringement-y directions.
• ellis0n 3y ago
  Public activity is marketing. Most good developers are not good marketers. But for rockstars blogging is definitely a big plus. I have over 100 past projects and need a cheat sheet to answer HR questions. Recruiters are usually not impressed with your past projects because you are a flood of resumes and interviews to them, and they usually not impressed with you because they just want to close the task. Because time is key. The 80/20 rule applies here. Only 20 percent of recruiters will read your resume carefully (not your show, blog, youtube, twitch, twitter, etc). Add to that 20% of fake jobs and your chances of finding the most relevant tech job for you are greatly reduced.
• housecarpenter 3y ago
  One issue with trying to stand out is that you might stand out in a bad way, rather than a good way. I have a blog, and a Github profile, but I'm not sure if I want employers looking at them, since a lot of my writing is poor, and a lot of my code is bad. There's good stuff there as well, I think, but my model of employers is that they are more concerned about false positives than false negatives, they tend to see "red flags" as nullifying any positive traits, and so, when they're examining my public portfolio, the parts that are bad are going to stick out and become salient in their mind, moreso than the parts that are good. I don't worry about this too much though because in my experience, no employer has ever looked at these things (even though I have usually made some mention of them on my CV). If they have they've never mentioned it at interview.
• SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  I would argue that being public is one of the ways you may be unintentionally biasing your hiring set against visible minorities. Most minority folks I know tend to avoid being public figures because they will become targets of bigotry. I’ve seen some fairly innocuous stuff get the most vile shit in comments/inboxes. I would hesitate to index for public profile knowing that being a public minority is riskier.