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Thanks for your advice. I do code on the side. I have a github and some OSS patches I've put in. Feedback from interviewers regarding it is that it is all amate

by hoboon 12y ago

Thanks for your advice. I do code on the side. I have a github and some OSS patches I've put in. Feedback from interviewers regarding it is that it is all amateurish and not so great/clean/beautiful. Usually people don't look at it, though. People usually don't read my resume until they're at the desk, which seems to be common. I've hidden .gifs in the README.md files so they get triggered when someone loads. Though, the way github works specifically is that it loads it into a cache some where onto ec2 so I don't know who is looking at what; I just know someone is looking, and possibly others, too. I do like python and am familiar with pandas/numpy/scikit (although all three are kind of more appropriate for experimentation than finished products). > Realize that the purpose of programming is to solve a problem, NOT to write code. I mentioned this to someone else: during an interview, code is all I have. I do take too long to solve some problems but I do solve them. I usually trip up translating them into code. I remember one time I wanted to make a way to have JIRA automatically know what fix version goes into a bug but my boss said don't waste time on it. One of his complaints was that I would get fix versions wrong. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I didn't have a good boss.

xaa 12y ago
OK, then I misjudged your situation a bit, and in this case, your problem is likely not the code side of things, but the communication side. One thing is that you are obviously down on yourself. That is self-defeating and self-reinforcing, because if you are unconfident, people will also assume that there's a reason, and most likely the reason is that you are incompetent. It's not fair, but it's true, and it's very easy for people to sense if you're not confident. This is independent of whether you actually ARE competent or not. Also, if someone says or implies that you aren't competent (as it sounds like your boss did), that does not mean they're right. YOU are in the best position to know your strengths and weaknesses, and rather than telling yourself "I'm not good at this, I should take a job in tech support", you should be asking yourself, "how do I get (even) better?". Which you have, in this post, and that's a great start. It helps to remember how far you've come since you started. If a boss repeatedly treats you as if you were incompetent, it's time to find a new one. A good boss will be helping you get better, always challenging you but not throwing you in over your head, and giving you a good deal of independence. I myself would prefer independence, challenge, and feeling valued at the expense of a less shiny title or even a pay cut, but that's a personal choice. Secondly, people do not make hiring decisions solely or perhaps even primarily on technical skill. In my experience, they want a candidate who has a certain skill threshold, and above that, they weigh other factors. Those factors typically include: how well do they fit in with the team, how self-directed are they, how well can they communicate to find what the real problems are, and can they solve them. So, in an interview, unless the interviewer is an idiot, you will get more "points" for clearly showing that you know HOW to solve the problem rather than showing you can write a syntactically correct program on the spot on the whiteboard. Again, communication. I would be remiss if I didn't add that it helps a lot as an applicant to know or be known by someone at the company. That is the real purpose of using GitHub as a resume: not so you can say, here, look at a sample of my code, but so that someone you're interviewing with might say: "OH, you're the author of the widely-used XYZ library? Well, we can just skip the formalities and start discussing salary." I can almost guarantee that if one of your repos has a few hundred stars, you will not get any negative comments about your coding style. Finally, your referencing Python as a prototyping language and mention of JIRA make me strongly suspect that you're at a BigCorp. BigCorps are, in my opinion, not a good place to learn, grow, and get independence. You will be treated as a replaceable cog. I would apply at a place where I could find a niche, master it, and be valued, rather than be viewed as "bug fixer #1057".
- hoboon 12y ago
  this is very helpful advice. i thank you for it. I think I might be below your threshold, though. I agree with you about a great github. though i don't know what i could make that people would want in the dozens or hundreds. my quip about python was more about np/pd/scikit. python is great. i'm distantly aware that i'm whining. the past couple of months have been bad. in the past week i think i may have had a solid psychotic break.
  - xaa 12y ago
    > I think I might be below your threshold, though. No. At least for a huge fraction of the available jobs. What you have said, plus the very fact you are on this site, makes this almost certain. You need to realize what "incompetence" really looks like, and how bad many developers really are. I'm talking "copy and paste code from StackOverflow", "take 3 weeks to parse a simple file format", "how do I load a MySQL dump" level of incompetence. I have seen all these things. > i don't know what i could make that people would want in the dozens or hundreds. Make something that scratches an itch you have, that nothing else (good) exists to solve, then generalize it and write clear documentation so it will be useful to others. A hint: the main factors I use before deciding whether to bother with a GitHub codebase are: 1) the quality of documentation and 2) the frequency of updates. These two things indicate that someone cares about the code and is likely to continue supporting it. Think of this as a test of your ability to identify and solve important problems. It is far from necessary to have a popular codebase to get a good job, but if you do, you will have no problems at all. > i'm distantly aware that i'm whining. the past couple of months have been bad. in the past week i think i may have had a solid psychotic break. Consider seeing a psychiatrist (not a regular MD) who specializes in depression and/or adult ADHD. My work improved significantly when I was diagnosed with mild depression and ADHD and was medicated for it. This will not be a panacea: you will have the same problems, but will be better equipped to cope with them. IANAMD, but it seems quite unlikely you are actually psychotic. However, deep depression combined with a bad life situation can combine to make your mind do very strange things. Realize that you are not alone, this happens to many people, and instead of a negative feedback loop of depression and failure, you can get into a positive feedback loop of confidence and success. Your fortunes can change surprisingly quickly if you take the proper steps, and you are very much on the right track. The biggest problem with depression is that it makes it difficult to take steps to fix it, but you are tackling that. A final word on dealing with psychiatrists, though, if you choose to go that route. Do research, decide what condition(s) you likely have, and then present the psychiatrist with the relevant facts to help guide them to the proper conclusion. Also, if you are having suicidal thoughts, I would not recommend you mention them. This has ended very badly for people I know. A psychiatrist would be horrified at this advice, but the fact is that psychiatrists are busy, and will jump to conclusions based on very little data unless you are informed and help them along. EDIT: One final small thing. Keeping with the theme of communication, I would suggest that whenever you're writing anything -- an e-mail, a HN comment, whatever, you always use proper spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc. (unless it's to close friends). Don't be a pedant, but these basics mark you as an intelligent person who considers their thoughts carefully. Notice how all the top HN commenters do this here, even though this isn't a formal venue. This isn't a coincidence: people will automatically give words more weight if they seem to come from someone who thought them through. Although proper grammar doesn't guarantee this, using informal grammar definitely makes a bad impression.

by hoboon 12y ago

xaa 12y ago

OK, then I misjudged your situation a bit, and in this case, your problem is likely not the code side of things, but the communication side. One thing is that you are obviously down on yourself. That is self-defeating and self-reinforcing, because if you are unconfident, people will also assume that there's a reason, and most likely the reason is that you are incompetent. It's not fair, but it's true, and it's very easy for people to sense if you're not confident. This is independent of whether you actually ARE competent or not. Also, if someone says or implies that you aren't competent (as it sounds like your boss did), that does not mean they're right. YOU are in the best position to know your strengths and weaknesses, and rather than telling yourself "I'm not good at this, I should take a job in tech support", you should be asking yourself, "how do I get (even) better?". Which you have, in this post, and that's a great start. It helps to remember how far you've come since you started. If a boss repeatedly treats you as if you were incompetent, it's time to find a new one. A good boss will be helping you get better, always challenging you but not throwing you in over your head, and giving you a good deal of independence. I myself would prefer independence, challenge, and feeling valued at the expense of a less shiny title or even a pay cut, but that's a personal choice. Secondly, people do not make hiring decisions solely or perhaps even primarily on technical skill. In my experience, they want a candidate who has a certain skill threshold, and above that, they weigh other factors. Those factors typically include: how well do they fit in with the team, how self-directed are they, how well can they communicate to find what the real problems are, and can they solve them. So, in an interview, unless the interviewer is an idiot, you will get more "points" for clearly showing that you know HOW to solve the problem rather than showing you can write a syntactically correct program on the spot on the whiteboard. Again, communication. I would be remiss if I didn't add that it helps a lot as an applicant to know or be known by someone at the company. That is the real purpose of using GitHub as a resume: not so you can say, here, look at a sample of my code, but so that someone you're interviewing with might say: "OH, you're the author of the widely-used XYZ library? Well, we can just skip the formalities and start discussing salary." I can almost guarantee that if one of your repos has a few hundred stars, you will not get any negative comments about your coding style. Finally, your referencing Python as a prototyping language and mention of JIRA make me strongly suspect that you're at a BigCorp. BigCorps are, in my opinion, not a good place to learn, grow, and get independence. You will be treated as a replaceable cog. I would apply at a place where I could find a niche, master it, and be valued, rather than be viewed as "bug fixer #1057".

hoboon 12y ago
this is very helpful advice. i thank you for it. I think I might be below your threshold, though. I agree with you about a great github. though i don't know what i could make that people would want in the dozens or hundreds. my quip about python was more about np/pd/scikit. python is great. i'm distantly aware that i'm whining. the past couple of months have been bad. in the past week i think i may have had a solid psychotic break.
- xaa 12y ago
  > I think I might be below your threshold, though. No. At least for a huge fraction of the available jobs. What you have said, plus the very fact you are on this site, makes this almost certain. You need to realize what "incompetence" really looks like, and how bad many developers really are. I'm talking "copy and paste code from StackOverflow", "take 3 weeks to parse a simple file format", "how do I load a MySQL dump" level of incompetence. I have seen all these things. > i don't know what i could make that people would want in the dozens or hundreds. Make something that scratches an itch you have, that nothing else (good) exists to solve, then generalize it and write clear documentation so it will be useful to others. A hint: the main factors I use before deciding whether to bother with a GitHub codebase are: 1) the quality of documentation and 2) the frequency of updates. These two things indicate that someone cares about the code and is likely to continue supporting it. Think of this as a test of your ability to identify and solve important problems. It is far from necessary to have a popular codebase to get a good job, but if you do, you will have no problems at all. > i'm distantly aware that i'm whining. the past couple of months have been bad. in the past week i think i may have had a solid psychotic break. Consider seeing a psychiatrist (not a regular MD) who specializes in depression and/or adult ADHD. My work improved significantly when I was diagnosed with mild depression and ADHD and was medicated for it. This will not be a panacea: you will have the same problems, but will be better equipped to cope with them. IANAMD, but it seems quite unlikely you are actually psychotic. However, deep depression combined with a bad life situation can combine to make your mind do very strange things. Realize that you are not alone, this happens to many people, and instead of a negative feedback loop of depression and failure, you can get into a positive feedback loop of confidence and success. Your fortunes can change surprisingly quickly if you take the proper steps, and you are very much on the right track. The biggest problem with depression is that it makes it difficult to take steps to fix it, but you are tackling that. A final word on dealing with psychiatrists, though, if you choose to go that route. Do research, decide what condition(s) you likely have, and then present the psychiatrist with the relevant facts to help guide them to the proper conclusion. Also, if you are having suicidal thoughts, I would not recommend you mention them. This has ended very badly for people I know. A psychiatrist would be horrified at this advice, but the fact is that psychiatrists are busy, and will jump to conclusions based on very little data unless you are informed and help them along. EDIT: One final small thing. Keeping with the theme of communication, I would suggest that whenever you're writing anything -- an e-mail, a HN comment, whatever, you always use proper spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc. (unless it's to close friends). Don't be a pedant, but these basics mark you as an intelligent person who considers their thoughts carefully. Notice how all the top HN commenters do this here, even though this isn't a formal venue. This isn't a coincidence: people will automatically give words more weight if they seem to come from someone who thought them through. Although proper grammar doesn't guarantee this, using informal grammar definitely makes a bad impression.