
Ask HN: Do I have to lie to get first tech job? - crypticlizard
I&#x27;ve graduated college (Philosophy, 3.2 GPA), done some various projects on Github (Using Go, JS, &amp; Python), networked with friends, but the problem I keep finding is my resume. People express interest in hiring me, check out my Github, but then give me the fade once they see my resume. I feel like it&#x27;s a catch-22: I can&#x27;t get experience until I&#x27;ve gotten experience. I thought my Github would close the gap, but alas it hasn&#x27;t! I&#x27;ve read lots of posts on HN discussing this, and all opinions are welcome in response to this query, but specifically let me ask, should I really just lie and claim more experience? (I&#x27;ve had friends wanting to hire me suggest this subtly)
======
_ah
Code More. Your analysis reveals a common mistake, and more (complex) projects
is the answer. This mistake is not obvious from the outside!

Once you actually work in the industry for a while, you realize that _most_
newbie side projects are incredibly small and distressingly unimpressive.
Since you've never worked in a production codebase, your internal metric of
difficulty and value is WAY off. You might think you have a really great
Github, but I suspect that you need samples at least 4x as complex as what
you've already done.

Remember that "CS Degree" is simply a indicator that you are solid hire.
Hiring managers are looking to maximize the chance that you're worth the
effort, so without the CS degree you'll need to work much much harder to prove
your worth. Definitely possible! But not easy.

Oh, and don't lie. If you claim experience and interview with me, I'll drill
you in _detail_ about your claimed experience and what you learned. I'll
figure out you were lying, and that's not a good hiring signal.

------
askafriend
There is missing information here. What makes you think you are slam-dunk
qualified for a 6 figure Software Engineering position when you only have a
couple of seemingly random (from what you've told us) projects up on GitHub?
Why should any team take a chance on you?

These are important questions to answer because you have to be able to crisply
articulate them otherwise there are much more qualified candidates to choose
from (depending on the hiring market).

Also what gives you the impression that lying is normal? There is a difference
between lying and casting your past experience in the most favorable light
possible (take this too far and you can cross over into the realm of lies).
Lying is a great way to start off in this industry on the wrong foot - it's a
smaller world than you think and the cost of lying is higher than you think.

------
imauld
> done some various projects on Github (Using Go, JS, & Python)

What exactly does this mean? Do you have a bunch of repos that are tutorial
projects or did you create something yourself? Are they deployed? What state
is the code in, does it look prod ready? Are there tests?

When an artist applies for a position they bring a prepared portfolio not a
bunch of sketchbooks. Is your Github a portfolio or a sketchbook?

------
SoggyMike
Write a software product whose binary will have some popular appeal.

It's doesn't have to be a Killer App - it's OK if that appeal is popular only
among a certain demographic.

I got my break as a coder by applying for a QA job that expected me only to
execute scripts that someone else wrote.

But one day my manager walked into my cube to find it completely wallpapered
with what looked like flowcharts.

"Those are actually dataflow diagrams," I explained. "I can't quality MacTCP
1.0.1 because the test tool always crashes."

"I know how to code on the Macintosh. Any chance you could get approval to
have me fix all the bugs in strm_echo?"

I knew and he knew and my manager's manager all knew that I was offering to do
software engineering for the pay I received as a script monkey.

I fixed strm_echo, qualified 1.0.1, 1.1 and wrote a new tool and a test plan
for 1.2. In the process I got really good at debugging with the MacsBug
machine debugger.

My next job I was the Product Development Manager for a company whose flagship
product was incompetently written by a con artists. I stayed at Working
Software for 3 1/2 years, during which I learned everything else - other than
MacsBug - that I needed to know to be a commercial Mac developer.

If you want a mobile app development job you have to have at least one app in
either Apple's App Store or in Google Play.

If you want to be a web developer you need to create a useful website - not
for other coders to look at your source, but for end-users to find useful and
appealing.

------
hluska
I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I would like to share some experience.
If you're applying for a job at the right level, you've been upfront about
your experience throughout the process and your Github is impressive, your
resume should only be a formality, unless it has some massive red flags.

Have you ever had a brutal editor (preferably someone you barely know) read
over your resume and give you some feedback? You might be surprised by the
results!

------
simonpure
If you have friends who are able to hire you, work with them to proove you are
capable to perform the job and are a good fit.

Offer to implement a feature for free or meaningfully contribute to one of
their open source projects to demonstrate you have the technical chops to be a
productive member of their team.

Also, besides technical skills, you have to be a good cultural fit. Make sure
you do your homework what they are looking for in candidates more generally.

------
jones1618
Of course, don't lie. Does your resume include software project work or just
non-tech jobs?

First, you should structure your resume as a "skills resume" that includes as
many languages, environments and major libraries as you know how to use.

Then, include your strongest, most relevant school/personal projects and list
them with action verbs, "Built XXX using YYY with these features...",
"Designed ZZZ with algorithm QQQ..."

Most employers are looking for entry-level developers that have built complete
solutions and not toy problems. They want to know that you can collaborate
with others and contribute. Underscore any and all school/volunteer projects
that show that.

BTW: I gave that same advice to my nephew who was self-taught without any
college degree to get his first development job. What helped him the most, I
think, was that he essentially created his own first job, so to speak, by
building a basic scheduling web app for a friend's bike messenger service (for
free). It filled a gap in his resume and proved that he could turn
requirements into working code. That's all he needed to get a "real" job.

------
tripletao
Everyone describes their experience in the light most favorable to them.
That's different from inventing a past job entirely. If you get caught in the
latter, then many (most?) companies will reject or fire you.

If you can't get a full-time job, do some contract work. Worst case, go on
Upwork or whatever. If you charge low enough, then someone will take the bait.
You can then describe that work in whatever misleadingly favorable terms you
prefer.

~~~
SoggyMike
"charge low enough"

For a while I had the idea that I would only charge the rate that I actually
required to cover my modest expenses.

I got no offers for any kind of work. Not perm, not contract.

Now that I charge obscene hourly rates I'm getting lots of work.

If you don't charge enough for contract coding potential clients will assume
that you are so inexperienced that you are completely unaware of what other
contractors are charging.

Use [http://salary.com](http://salary.com) to guide your bid. If you _do_
choose to pursue contract programming, add one-half of your IRS 1040 Schedule
SE Self Employment Tax to salary.com's salary then convert it to hourly rates.

But you will also want to pay for your own vacations, medical insurance and
the like. Do some research on what kind of benefits your kind of coder
receives than add at least that much to salary.com's salary and one-half of
your self-employment tax.

(The self employment tax is equal to the sum of the employer and employee
contributes to FICA - the social security tax.)

Also take into account the cost of providing your own software and equipment,
your advertising and other legitimate business expenses.

All this has the result that contractors appear to be far better paid than are
perm employees. If you only charge what I advise above then your take-home pay
will be no more than that of the perms.

~~~
tripletao
Agreed in general. If you're literally looking to get paid money to do
something for the very first time in your life, then I'm not sure the amount
matters much--just code a landing page for $100 or whatever, and then use that
experience to get a real job.

Aside: Not a great sign that the answer that most strongly advises honesty is
the lowest-rated...

------
badpun
Try getting some PRs into an estabilished open source projects, such as for
example Apache Spark, Mozilla Firefox etc. These projects follow standard,
modern practices of software companies, so getting your PRs (maybe a couple of
bugfixes or a minor feature/extension) approved means you should be qualified
for a junior developer position.

------
PeOe
Don´t lie about your qualifications because they will know after hiring you.
That´s not a good impression for the business. Maybe you want to get a good
job but you should start small and learn, learn and learn until you get to the
better positions. An internship would be a great start, eventually in another
country.

------
muzani
If you're relying on a resume for work, you're probably being inefficient in
the first place. All the jobs I got were not through a resume. The resume is
just there to justify to the boss's boss why they're hiring me.

~~~
CodeKommissar
What method did you use to get your first job?

~~~
muzani
Joined a programming agency run by a friend of my father. I did poorly on the
technical interview, had bad grades, but the boss knew that I made games and
went to a really good school so they took a chance on me.

~~~
paulcole
Just for the sake of more complete information: what year did you get your
first job?

~~~
muzani
2012\. Would that be a big difference?

------
itamarst
Happy to do resume review, if you're interested - itamar@codewithoutrules.com

------
meric
Tell truth at all times. Start at $25 an hour doing freelancing and work your
way up. After a couple of years your rate would be > $75 then transition into
full time tech job.

------
rhapsodic
I would say work with a recruiter. That's how I got my first programming job,
with only two semesters of CS education but a lot of time invested in teaching
myself how to program. Recruiters should have a good idea for what their
clients are looking for, and how flexible they are WRT unorthodox educational
backgrounds, no professional experience, etc. They won't waste your time with
clients with which you wouldn't stand a chance. (Not that they care about your
time, necessarily. They wouldn't want to alienate their client by sending
someone who is in their not-a-chance-in-hell bracket.)

Also, if you're trying to work for a big tech name or some hip startup, go for
the enterprise IT shop instead. A bank, insurance company, hospital system,
grocery store chain, etc. Because working in those places is considered
unsexy, and they know it, they have to be more flexible than the places that
are flooded with resumes from hotshot coders. Again, that's how I got my foot
in the door. Work there for a year or two, do well, learn as much as you
possibly can, and you'll be firmly established on the career ladder.

------
angersock
Lying is unacceptable--it's better to be honest with your employer and if they
still hire you then both sides have better-calibrated expectations.

If you're not getting the sort of work you want, maybe adjust your
expectations.

------
prachisara
Amazon Web Services is an extensively evolving cloud computing platform which
is provided by Amazon. Web services are also called as remote computing
services and cloud services.

[https://www.besanttechnologies.com/training-
courses/amazon-w...](https://www.besanttechnologies.com/training-
courses/amazon-web-services-training-in-bangalore)

------
bigiain
Everybody else does. Not doing so just puts you behind the rest of the pack.
Work out what your own personal line-in-the-sand between "exaggeration" and
"outright lying" is, work out what you can plausibly exaggerate - and whether
your references will support those exaggerations. You (probably) need to make
at least _some_ of your Github or side project work sound on your resume like
"commercial experience", and ideally have someone as a reference for that bit
of work who'll back that claim up.

Everybody exaggerates on their resume - the line between that and lying is up
to you and your own personal ethics.

You 100% wouldn't be the first person to land your job (first or not) based on
a lie. Make sure you can back the lie up though, and try to make it a small
enough lie that the next resume doesn't need to perpetuate it (you don't want
to be the CTO trying to explain away why the company about us page lists you
as graduating from Harvard...).

