
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda's Resume.  Anyone interested? - cmdrtaco
http://cmdrtaco.net/resume.pdf
======
DanielBMarkham
Rob -- you're like Superman. Could Superman have a resume? Seems like you'd
just give them a card that said "I'm f*cking CmdrTaco, damnit!"

(The reference here is to a famous fake letter said to be from Sean Connery to
Steve Jobs [http://www.exophrine.com/2011/06/sean-connery-to-steve-
jobs-...](http://www.exophrine.com/2011/06/sean-connery-to-steve-jobs-im-f-
cking.html))

Seriously, it brings up a good point. If you have lots of name recognition,
what's the best way to look for work? I'd suggest networking, but it's
entirely possible to be hugely famous without a deep contact list. I'm not
sure Rob has this problem, but if he did, it would be a difficult one to
address.

~~~
patio11
Actual famous people have agents. For mere mortals who are very well known in
a niche, put out the word that you are looking for work and work will find
you. Resumes are not an accelerant for this process, since as soon as you're a
resume you're competing with other resumes. Everyone in the market has a
resume, but rather less people have a career that needs no introduction. I
would not suggest downgrading yourself from that status (exception: post-offer
pro-forma resume for HR after you have agreement in principle from
decisionmaker).

~~~
kamaal
_put out the word that you are looking for work and work will find you._

Just curious to know, I am normal person or a mere mortal as you described.

How do I get hired without the normal Resume, Recruiter, HR, Interview
process?

~~~
DavidChouinard
Here's what I sent to the Khan Academy for a job:
<http://davidchouinard.com/khanacademy/>

In my experience, anything that gets around the formal hiring process is a
win. Finding a way around the application process _is_ the application
process.

~~~
jpulgarin
No idea why you're getting downvoted. (ex-Khan Academy intern here, good
luck!)

------
blhack
It might be worth adding:

"I'm Rob Malda. When you hire me, it's going to be the best advertising money
you ever spend when every tech outlet in the world covers the story about
where I am now working."

~~~
cmdrtaco
I'll get that into v2.0 ;)

~~~
pork
Rob, long-time /. fan who migrated over to HN when the signal-to-noise ratio
exceeded my threshold. I just wanted to say thank you, and also that it's
slightly ironic that you seem to be following the same path over to HN... :)

~~~
nolok
That's not irony.

Also that's probably not even true, I would guess that cmdrtaco keeps reading
slashdot for old time's sake if nothing else (you don't erase 14 years
easily), and in 2011 it turns out you can visit several websites instead of
giving allegiance to the One and only.

~~~
hemos
Indeed; and I tend to think of visiting HN, Reddit etc as like going to visit
my kids/grandkids. They've grown so much!

~~~
pork
To continue the analogy...do you feel that /. is wasting away, or is it just
attracting a different demographic these days?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Why is that? I've been reading it for years (given at a high threshold) and it
seems like the same old slashdot to me. It's also a great deal friendlier
place than this one.

~~~
kls
_It's also a great deal friendlier place than this one_

My experience has been the the opposite, I stopped contributing to user forum
based sites after I left /. and did not do so for a long time. I read HN for a
while before deciding that it was home, and it was, because in my perception,
there was a lot less "I'm the smartest guy in the room" conversations. Take
that with a grain of salt though, because it has been a long long time since I
have been over there. Things almost assuredly have changed since then. Has
anyone else had the same positive impression of the exchanges over there? Most
the posts I see on the subject tend to complain that there is still a lot of
it going on.

~~~
vidarh
Hackernews is a lot less tolerant of digressions, jokes etc. It ends up being
a much more "serious" place, for both good and bad.

~~~
Kuiper
HN seems to have a different set of values. While there's less tolerance for
jokes and culture references for the sake of culture references, HN tends to
house a lot of intellectually frank discussion that a lot of other sites
discourage.

A good example is this post from several weeks ago on the subject of denying
blood donations from donors with a history of male-to-male sexual contact:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237895> It's very fact-centric, to the
exclusion of any sort of pandering or apology. When I read this post several
weeks ago, I immediately thought, "this would never fly on reddit; people
would quickly downvote it for being 'insensitive' or similar."

This also reminded me of PG's essay "Persuade xor Discover."
<http://www.paulgraham.com/discover.html> HN users seem to care less about
"persuasion," which can lead to perceptions of "unfriendliness" because things
aren't written to please people. However, it does lead to a lot of interesting
discussion that couldn't take place on a site more concerned with being
"nice."

------
michaelpinto
Accomplishments: "single handedly destroying the productivity of a generation
of nerds"

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Hehe, that's exactly what I was thinking of when I read:

 _"Objective: To use all of my skills to change the world for the better.
Again."_

I can only imagine what great things I would've done with my time if /. hadn't
been around. Or maybe I would've simply stayed at the online forum where I was
posting before /. came along, wasting my time all the same.

~~~
Joeri
You weren't wasting your time, you were becoming a technology generalist. It's
a useful skill!

------
staunch
Do a new site man. Slashdot->[Digg]->Reddit->CmdrTaco's new site.

As much as I have love for Reddit its ripe for replacement.

~~~
redthrowaway
Digg's not quite dead yet; not sure it needs the brackets.

~~~
WalterGR
This seems to be true. Can anyone explain the downvotes?

According to Alexa, Digg is the 190th most popular site in the world. It shows
traffic holding steady for the past few months. And clicking on the pageviews
tab shows that pageviews have dropped over the last year+ but not
extradramatically.

~~~
WalterGR
Here's a graph comparing ycombinator.com and digg.com:

[http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&...](http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=t&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=ycombinator.com&&u=digg.com&);

(Keep in mind that the scale is logarithmic.)

As a website owner, I would love it if my site were dying like Digg.

------
samstave
I am not sure if i should rate you 5 informative, 5 insightful, or 5 funny!

Definitely no -1 overrated though.

Alas - I have but only one mod point to give on this den of iniquity!

~~~
plnewman
mod parent up!

------
jgw
Disappointed that Expertise bullets missed "Stuff that matters" right under
"Nerds".

~~~
nolok
OMG Ponies !!!

------
wmoxam
No Github profile. Less relevant buzzwords than a resume on Monster.com. Lame.

------
tibbon
If I hire you, can I get a 3 digit slashdot id?

~~~
kls
If you seriously want one, you can have mine, I have to dig the username and
password up, it's been almost a decade since I last logged in, I am sure I
have it in an old email somewhere.

~~~
SODaniel
I can throw in my 3 number ICQ id :)

~~~
huhtenberg
Woah, really? Try auctioning it off in Russia. As of few years ago the going
rate for 4 digit UIDs was in tens of thousand dollars.

~~~
NickFitz
My 4 digit /. UID is also prime. Does that command a premium?

~~~
cmdrtaco
So is my 1 digit UID.

------
ImprovedSilence
Ever have thoughts on doing another startup? I'm sure you've put a significant
amount of thought into social interactions and moderation of an environment
and it's community, I bet there are some very good translations there into
some sort of social media service/internet karma scheme/more accurately
focused targeting of peoples actual interests (and lack thereof). I'm willing
to bet chatting with you would make for some great intellectually stimulating
conversation.

~~~
cmdrtaco
I'd very much consider it.

------
laconian
Gotta be a fake. Not nearly enough misspellings. ;)

------
shortformblog
Reading this resume is like having the resume for Michael Jordan hit your
desk. You're so impressed that you don't know what to do at it, other than
stare.

------
bdr
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

------
scorxn
No indent below Education is killing me!

~~~
cmdrtaco
College is left leaning.

~~~
spydum
Is that a double entendre?

------
brianwillis
_Objective: To use all of my skills to change the world for the better.
Again._

I normally glance at career objectives, sigh, roll my eyes, and move on to the
the meat of the resume, but this one is actually good. Anyone searching for a
job, do yourself a favor and follow CmdrTaco's lead. Your career objective
shouldn't be long or full of bullshit corporate speak, and if it is that will
hurt you more than it helps.

~~~
thewisedude
Kudos to Slashdot! It had a great impact. That is the word I would choose to
use, rather than the word "Better". It is because "impact" can be
quantitatively measured. "Better" is subjective.

------
kls
So is this a legit account, it was created 99 days ago which seems kind of
short for someone as wired in as Rob should be, can anyone on this site
confirm that the account is indeed Rob? I don't mean to be skeptical but it's
the kind of thing that could kill the credibility of the site. A site full of
people that pride themselves on being critical (polite but critical, I remind
you) being duped does not bode well for attracting people who want scrutiny of
their information and not just more confirmation bias.

It just seems strange to me, why would Rob be in the market for a job, I could
understand being in the market for a team but not a job, unless he did
something stupid like I did and lost it all, if so I would love to hear that
story. If it is I apologize for being critical I would have just imagined you
being here a long time ago. I was one of your first users over on the other
site back in the day, I always though based on your post over there that you
would love it over here.

~~~
hemos
I can absolutely confirm that it is him. Although you have to trust that I am
in fact, hemos, but the other folks I know on here can attest to that.

~~~
thomson
Maybe we should implement a PGP-style circle of trust on HN... =D

~~~
leoc
Seriously, why not create a GPG web of trust?

~~~
randallsquared
Because it's already easier _without_ encryption to get people's trust from
scratch than it is to impersonate someone else.

------
lionhearted
I'm sure you've gotten tons of interest and I'm not 100% sure what we'd do,
but I'll fly you out to Beijing and put you up somewhere nice if you want to
see if there's a fit. A many-hats-wearing-change-the-world type person can do
just about anything they want, when they find the right mix of something that
excites them and good people to work with.

My finance guy who raises money for projects is here Dec 13th to 23rd so it's
particularly a good time, but I'm flexible. Could also meet in Taipei around
New Year's if you like. You might want to check up on my crazy antics before
you throw in with me though, in the last couple weeks I've gotten a lot of
comments ranging from "a literary hero" for the open letter I wrote to S&S to
complete maniac, jerk, dick, etc.

Anyways, who knows, maybe nothing's there. But we can definitely watch some
Cowboy Bebop, check out the Forbidden City, and see if there's anything worth
changing in the world. Email in profile if it's interesting to you.

------
bobbles
Ever worked in a team?

~~~
cmdrtaco
Managed teams for 13 of the 14 years ;)

~~~
tlammens
That's a no? ;)

~~~
cmdrtaco
Well, I wasn't the CEO, so I was always on someone's team.

~~~
tlammens
Oops, apparently I offended some of your fans.

How many people were working for slashdot if I may ask?

------
grabble
You're confusing me Rob. You want to be someone's employee, follow someone
else's vision, get a regular paycheck, dental plan yada yada - and yet you
want to change the world. Again.

It's definitely possible to do, but not as likely, and resumes are a bit
played out, esp. for someone with your credentials.

Yep. Totally confused.

~~~
kmfrk
That's a bit bleak. In corporations, you work _for_ someone; in places like
start-ups, you stand a good chance of working _with_ someone. You don't need
to be the founder to get into that position, but it's obviously an option.

~~~
grabble
Rob doesn't need to parade around a resume to get in a startup. The boy is
prequalified.

------
hack_edu
Resumes that can pull off an 'Objective' line always make me smile. Those that
can't make me cringe.

------
bane
Rob, if you are still interested in the social media space, have you thought
about:

a) applying at reddit

b) starting up a reddit competitor (your karma system is still among the best
I've seen)?

If not, what kind of area are you thinking of? I'd imagine your varied
skillset would be awesome at a very small startup.

------
wallacrw
Your next move should be to rebuild local government with more control and
transparency into public dollars. It's what we're doing at CivicSponsor, drop
me a line if you want to talk.

------
shawnee_
_Personally posted over 15,000 stories, rejecting a million more._

Although 15K is not a small number, for some reason seems like it should be
more. I guess that makes every user submitted slashdot story that was posted
by cmdrtaco himself that much more cool.

An oldie but goodie: [http://slashdot.org/story/05/03/02/1456237/yahoo-
turns-10-fr...](http://slashdot.org/story/05/03/02/1456237/yahoo-
turns-10-free-ice-cream-for-america)

------
thiagofm
You are very good sir, and also lucky. You are talented and hardworking, but,
still lucky.

There's a lot of talented and hardworking people here, like you, not as lucky
tho.

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> There's a lot of talented and hardworking people here, like you, not as lucky tho.
    

Not denying a significant random component to success, but success does not
seem to follow a random distribution.

If given a choice between picking someone coming off a big success, or someone
who looks equally smart but was only moderately successful, many would choose
to bet on the person who was successful last time.

~~~
kls
The initial success though given all parts being equal is just as random, so
you still have the same odds starting out. It's the same concept as what
Buffett calls the *Lucky sperm club". His concept was just applied in the
other direction, being born into success.

------
option1138
Not really a lot of relevant experience. Would like to see some Hadoop or
heck, even some C#. Let's talk again in a year or two.

------
rdl
If I had that background, I'd probably be most interested in some kind of
political/activism startup (e.g. Votizen), or some kind of project/funding
startup (e.g. Kickstarter). Presumably there are non-competes to make starting
"unslashdotted.org" or something a no-go, and I don't think I'd want to after
working on one from 1997-2011.

------
1pointOhhh
How Janet Hoilian got more stock then Malda I'll never know.

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1093580/0000950135-99...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1093580/0000950135-99-005494.txt)

Agood lesson in there for today's bootstrappers

~~~
ktsmith
You need to look for Blockstackers in the document rather than Rob or Jeff.

------
jimktrains2
Why is it marked scribd?

~~~
mcpherrinm
That's a linked to the scribd HTML version of the PDF.

------
grabble
Oh Rob, being a long time /. reader, I know you'd ban someone's account to
Hades if they did on /. what your doing here.

Just sayin.

~~~
cmdrtaco
Notice that my resume isn't _ON_ Slashdot!

------
rch
I'm working on some interesting things with zndx.org -- email with my username
if your're curious.

------
billmcneale
That's an odd résumé, which doesn't look at all like a software engineer
résumé. Is this intentional or is CmdrTaco not an engineer at all? Programming
languages? Frameworks? Specifics about the scaling and daily operations of /.?

It's also pretty light on the kind of position he's looking for.

If I were hiring engineers, I honesty wouldn't know what to do with such a
résumé.

~~~
tankenmate
I think it is safe to say that CmdrTaco is more than just a "mere" engineer.

~~~
billmcneale
That's also what I thought until I read his résumé.

Which tells me there's something wrong with it.

~~~
SquareWheel
I pause awkwardly every time I read résumé with the accents.

------
tobych
Typo? Replace "self moderating" with self-moderating". Thanks for /.

------
gallerytungsten
So what's your dream job?

------
ronnier
Amazon is hiring :D

------
fowkswe
What did the 2 fingers say to the mouse? CLICK!

I'm CmdrTaco Bitch!

------
j45
Resspect.

------
nknight
I don't think I've ever seen a resumé covering a 14-year tech/tech-related
career that fit on one page.

~~~
hemos
I should get him to the post his joke resume. It's not even just one page,
it's two lines on one page.

~~~
cmdrtaco
My joke resume that I made a month ago: [http://cmdrtaco.net/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/Joke-Resume.p...](http://cmdrtaco.net/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/Joke-Resume.pdf)

~~~
cmdrtaco
Whatever resume gets me the best job is my favorite.

~~~
loceng
What kind of job are you looking for, would make you happy?

~~~
tathagatadg
Yeah...cmdrtaco should write the job description he seeks, not the resume! His
resume is the worldwide community of nerds he has helped grow ...

------
shareme
Damn if I had a startup right now I would hire you as you are close to me geo-
location :)

BTW, how is the startup scene in your area of Michigan?

~~~
hemos
Decent; but not great. Nate is doing <http://ingenuitas.com>

------
zotz
Rob, if you're still looking at this thread, check this out:

<http://cyclos.org>

Change the world for the better by changing the money for the better...it can
happen. This software even has a built-in karma system.

Thanks for /. Cheers.

------
crcsmnky
Insert obligatory post from Netcraft confirming that XYZ is dying.

~~~
bad_user
In Soviet Russia XYZ confirms Netcraft is dying.

------
j_baker
Since nobody is playing devil's advocate, I suppose I have to. :-)

Have you done anything that doesn't fall under the "slashdot" header? If I saw
this resume, my first instinct would be to say "Yeah, he made slashdot, but
how do I know he's not a one-trick pony?"

Might I suggest a couple of open source projects or _something_ to suggest
that there's more to you than a degree and slashdot?

I like the nice, simple, and to-the-point layout. But I think it might be a
bit extreme.

~~~
cmdrtaco
I don't think anybody cares about patches to enlightenment, afterstep, or
various X11 widgets written 15 years ago!

------
RickMcAsshole
That's childsplay compared to <http://ezyang.com/ezyang-resume.pdf>

