
Being good at more than 1 thing is more valuable than being excellent in 1 only - BIackSwan
http://karankurani.com/post/177084191438/being-average-in-1-things-is-easier-and-more
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leetbulb
I find this difficult.

I'd consider myself an expert with PHP (and various frameworks), JavaScript
(NodeJS and React), SysAdmin, and MySQL, but also "good" with C++ (modern),
CI/CD / DevOps, AWS, K8S, and other random technologies like MongoDB,
Elasticsearch, Druid, Redis, etc...but find it extremely difficult to find
career opportunities. Mostly because I feel that having such a broad resume
could lead to the assumption that I would demand more compensation than an
average employee, which is something that has actually been confirmed by a
hiring manager.

~~~
MrLeap
What's extremely difficult to you? My resume is _broad_, a touch of ADHD has
had me doing everything from printer drivers, to data science to videogames
for the U.S. Army.

Admittedly, first instinct was to scoff at the difficult-to-get-jobs comment,
but then I remembered a time I was jobless and looking. I applied for 105
different positions, I only got 4 callbacks and 2 interviews. Neither
interview led to an offer.

I was literally down to my last 100$, ready to start selling things to pay the
rent and someone called me with a job who found my linkedin profile at random.
I hadn't even applied to them!

That experience re-validated some heuristics I have for applying to jobs. I
ignored them in that instance because I thought I was "being too picky". I
used to think I was a superstar at getting jobs, remaining interested in them,
not as much. Fortunately these days both lines have moved a bit towards the
center.

The following year when I was looking for contracts I re-implemented most of
my original rules, and my offer rate jumped from 0:2:4:105 to 5:6:9:10. I
don't think they're laws for everyone, but they've worked for me.

1) Avoid recruiters. Make sure your resume hits the desk of someone who works
for the target company with no brokers in between. Look up companies in your
industry, in your area, with your interest level. Ask your friends if they
know anyone who works there, have a casual coffee with your inside contact.
Say you're just networking. Ask them what they do, be genuinely interested.
Answer their questions about what you do. Express interest in working at said
company. Follow their directions -- ESPECIALLY if it doesn't include the
sentence "apply on their website".

2) Your resume is simultaneously more and less important than you think. If
you network it's nearly irrelevant. I once got a job with a resume that was
totally nonsense. I uploaded a PDF and when the hiring manager got it, it was
displayed to him as binary -> ascii. I was using weird kerning settings that
made it so about every 7th, 11th and 15th letter was missing. This intrigued
the stakeholder enough that they called me to see if I was a lunatic.

I was not, that job was fun.

If you have any specific difficulties I may have a folksy anecdote showing how
I defeated the very same thing. I'm getting old.

~~~
leetbulb
Thank you for the advice :) The PDF bit is hilarious.

------
waterbear
More to the point, it’s proof of mental alacrity to find new challenges worth
meeting.

To seek out cool things, even if they represent difficult accomplishments, and
maintain enough drive to reach the finish line.

Imitating one successful chess strategy, and using it on only those who are
unfamiliar with how to defend against it, is very different from being
generally good at chess, and a handful of other complicated games as well.

------
fitba1969
How about being excellent at one thing and knowing a wee bit about a bunch of
other things

