5 ms·

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 ca

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.
  - hoherd 3y ago
    True. AFAIK he had created multiple accounts to play with, so he was exploiting his own test accounts. But as I said, we all talked about how risky of a move that was.
- moneywoes 3y ago
  Did they give him the job? Unfortunately doesn’t sound like a scalable application strategy
  - hoherd 3y ago
    Hah, indeed! IIRC he decided not to take the position and stay with the company. I don't know if they made him an offer.
simonw 3y ago
I love that binder idea. I've been meaning for years to put together a proper "projects" portfolio for my own site. I really like what Tom MacWright has for that https://macwright.com/projects/ https://macwright.com/projects/
j45 3y ago
Show and tell of what you're learning is really valuable too.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Make sure 1) the product has already been released to the public and 2) the hardware isn't stolen... don't give away anything proprietary Basically no one I've ever met was able to show me work from the giant corporation they worked for. But it's not because of NDAs. Indeed because of the nature of my business, those companies are my customers, we already all work together, I've signed NDAs, they are actually permitted to show me stuff. It's because they didn't do anything. NDA = Not Doing Anything. > That alone will get you 80% of the way to the job. Large corporations (500+) employ like half of Americans, and probably way more than 50% of tech workers. So many of their management systems boil down to having 2-10 people redundantly doing the same work. So many do no work. I mean I'm sure they aspire to do work, but there isn't any to do. As long as this remains the norm, your interviewers will, statistically speaking, have done similarly little as you, and that will be okay, and leetcode will prevail.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  Hobby projects would work, no?
- temp51723 3y ago
  > It's because they didn't do anything. NDA = Not Doing Anything. No, it's because it's my employers code, not mine. God knows what trying to exfiltrate it opens me up to criminally or civilly.
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    It's your prerogative. Nobody said anything about "exfiltrating." Showing someone X doesn't mean that X isn't owned by its owner anymore. These aren't semantic arguments. You're going to have a hard time expressing what exactly is the violation when everyone has signed the same NDAs and CIIAs! Like if you work for Google, and I work for Google, you can fathom, well I can look at code you've written for Google. Okay, now if I only "work" for Google, which like 200,000 people do, and they've signed the same exact agreements as you... It's your prerogative! > criminally or civilly It's your prerogative! You can leetcode instead! I am not saying this is you. But there are many developers, arguably the majority, who complain tirelessly about the status quo of interviewing. And given one opportunity after another to change that status quo - doing the stuff Simon says, doing the stuff I am saying - they make no effort! They vamp about how it's impossible. They think their social local mobile trip planning startup website code is sensitive. They think their 15 layers of Dagger dependency injections is sensitive. It's not. If you want to change the status quo from leetcoding, you're going to have to screen share a "diff" here or there, and show people concretely what the hell you've been doing for a year at BigCo or UnicornCo. I cannot predict the future and I cannot generalize, but in my experience, the likelihood of criminal, civil or even the far more realistic reputational and cultural repurcussion is extremely small. All I am saying is, the reason this hasn't happened yet is because most people spend a year at BigCo and UnicornCo doing nothing of any substance. I mean maybe that's going to change. But it's really tough, nobody is being honest with how truly tremendously mismanaged and ZIRP-fueled large employers are. It hasn't been this way forever, but it has for at least 10 years, and it means some crazy things have happened in the job market that made no sense.
fho 3y ago
I basically just did that and got the job. The interesting bit is that after the (many) interview(s) I talked to some guys and was told not to do that because it would be too unusual and would decrease my chances :shrug:
- g4zj 3y ago
  Being unusual seems important for standing out of the crowd of applicants.
  - pc86 3y ago
    The trick is being unusual enough to stand out initially but not so much that it's questioned at later steps whether or not you'll be able to fit in, work on the existing team, etc.
- digitalsushi 3y ago
  i'd tell you not to do that so that when i steal it from you, i'm also not competing against you
not_the_fda 3y ago
I do something similar. I have a binder of product brochures for every product I have built. Its worked very effectively and is more engaging than just talking about some tech, you can point to an actual product and show how it all works.
jimmychoozyx 3y ago
For a Digital version of the binder, I recommend https://docusaurus.io/ https://docusaurus.io/ + its MermaidJS theme for quick, codeable diagrams

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.
- hoherd 3y ago
  True. AFAIK he had created multiple accounts to play with, so he was exploiting his own test accounts. But as I said, we all talked about how risky of a move that was.
moneywoes 3y ago
Did they give him the job? Unfortunately doesn’t sound like a scalable application strategy
- hoherd 3y ago
  Hah, indeed! IIRC he decided not to take the position and stay with the company. I don't know if they made him an offer.

simonw 3y ago

I love that binder idea. I've been meaning for years to put together a proper "projects" portfolio for my own site. I really like what Tom MacWright has for that https://macwright.com/projects/ https://macwright.com/projects/

j45 3y ago

Show and tell of what you're learning is really valuable too.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> Make sure 1) the product has already been released to the public and 2) the hardware isn't stolen... don't give away anything proprietary Basically no one I've ever met was able to show me work from the giant corporation they worked for. But it's not because of NDAs. Indeed because of the nature of my business, those companies are my customers, we already all work together, I've signed NDAs, they are actually permitted to show me stuff. It's because they didn't do anything. NDA = Not Doing Anything. > That alone will get you 80% of the way to the job. Large corporations (500+) employ like half of Americans, and probably way more than 50% of tech workers. So many of their management systems boil down to having 2-10 people redundantly doing the same work. So many do no work. I mean I'm sure they aspire to do work, but there isn't any to do. As long as this remains the norm, your interviewers will, statistically speaking, have done similarly little as you, and that will be okay, and leetcode will prevail.

galleywest200 3y ago
Hobby projects would work, no?
temp51723 3y ago
> It's because they didn't do anything. NDA = Not Doing Anything. No, it's because it's my employers code, not mine. God knows what trying to exfiltrate it opens me up to criminally or civilly.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  It's your prerogative. Nobody said anything about "exfiltrating." Showing someone X doesn't mean that X isn't owned by its owner anymore. These aren't semantic arguments. You're going to have a hard time expressing what exactly is the violation when everyone has signed the same NDAs and CIIAs! Like if you work for Google, and I work for Google, you can fathom, well I can look at code you've written for Google. Okay, now if I only "work" for Google, which like 200,000 people do, and they've signed the same exact agreements as you... It's your prerogative! > criminally or civilly It's your prerogative! You can leetcode instead! I am not saying this is you. But there are many developers, arguably the majority, who complain tirelessly about the status quo of interviewing. And given one opportunity after another to change that status quo - doing the stuff Simon says, doing the stuff I am saying - they make no effort! They vamp about how it's impossible. They think their social local mobile trip planning startup website code is sensitive. They think their 15 layers of Dagger dependency injections is sensitive. It's not. If you want to change the status quo from leetcoding, you're going to have to screen share a "diff" here or there, and show people concretely what the hell you've been doing for a year at BigCo or UnicornCo. I cannot predict the future and I cannot generalize, but in my experience, the likelihood of criminal, civil or even the far more realistic reputational and cultural repurcussion is extremely small. All I am saying is, the reason this hasn't happened yet is because most people spend a year at BigCo and UnicornCo doing nothing of any substance. I mean maybe that's going to change. But it's really tough, nobody is being honest with how truly tremendously mismanaged and ZIRP-fueled large employers are. It hasn't been this way forever, but it has for at least 10 years, and it means some crazy things have happened in the job market that made no sense.

fho 3y ago

I basically just did that and got the job. The interesting bit is that after the (many) interview(s) I talked to some guys and was told not to do that because it would be too unusual and would decrease my chances :shrug:

g4zj 3y ago
Being unusual seems important for standing out of the crowd of applicants.
- pc86 3y ago
  The trick is being unusual enough to stand out initially but not so much that it's questioned at later steps whether or not you'll be able to fit in, work on the existing team, etc.
digitalsushi 3y ago
i'd tell you not to do that so that when i steal it from you, i'm also not competing against you

not_the_fda 3y ago

I do something similar. I have a binder of product brochures for every product I have built. Its worked very effectively and is more engaging than just talking about some tech, you can point to an actual product and show how it all works.

jimmychoozyx 3y ago

For a Digital version of the binder, I recommend https://docusaurus.io/ https://docusaurus.io/ + its MermaidJS theme for quick, codeable diagrams