
How to Get Hired: From a Developer and Manager Point of View - CodeLikeAJedi
https://code.likeagirl.io/how-to-get-hired-from-a-developer-manager-point-of-view-5c8a43c8ce95
======
DontBeAZombie
To summarize the article: you must eat, sleep, and shit code, and tell the
whole world about it all the time in order to prove that you're "passionate"
about programming.

Yeah, you can do that, if you legitimately want to. Or you can have a life
away from the computer and go outside once in a while. So here's some
different advice.

DO: Be good at your craft. Be able to go into an interview and discuss
architecture or algorithms or whatever it is that you're interviewing for with
the people you're going to be working with. Be able to talk about your thought
process, so that even if maybe you don't remember the exact syntax of some API
call or command-line utility, you can explain to the interviewer what you're
thinking and why.

DON'T: Don't for a minute believe that you must be "passionate" about
programming in order to enjoy it or to be good at it. Don't forget that you
and your employer are engaged in a business relationship, and nothing more.
Don't romanticize your job or define your self-worth by the fact that you work
for FaceAppleGoogSnapZonFlix (or that you don't).

And don't work your ass to the bone chasing _someone else 's_ big idea.

~~~
iamcasen
I completely agree with you in principle, yet I still find myself working on a
personal website with stuff to show off how I think and work.

In any industry, you need to capture people's attention one way or another.
You can craft your personal brand through a website, and your projects and
your articles --

Or you can craft your personal brand in person, by schmoozing and networking
and making sure people know who you are and what you can do.

I'm not the best people person, but I am a truly excellent software engineer
and businessman. I haven't had much success maintaining a loyal network of
people who will connect me with opportunities, but I do have an excellent
track record of building great software.

The problem is, how do I convince people of that? Most of my code is
proprietary and cannot be shared with prospective clients or companies.

~~~
majormajor
I believe that insisting on seeing code is a trap. Code is notoriously tricky
to evaluate without actually running it for a while, anyway - look at all the
bugs that make it through code reviews - so it works well for "ok they're not
completely full of shit" but rarely a lot beyond that.

If there's truly interesting and clever architectural stuff going on, that can
be explained in words in an interview (in person or not). That puts some
burden back on people skills, but... if you're creating clever solutions you
can't explain to other technical people, I'm going to be worried about your
ability to work on a team anyway.

If I'm hiring someone with more than 5 years of experience I'm hoping they can
tell me some interesting war stories or have some interesting design ideas
when asked about a potential business problem.

------
smackay
All of the recommendations are just manifestations of, or proxies for, the
really important things you need to be a great developer: enthusiasm, energy,
curiosity, dedication and thoroughness. In general, for most programming jobs,
the technical stuff is unimportant by comparison.

I would like to throw in a note of caution to what's being presented here as
desirable traits. It's all just trumpet-blowing and self-promotion, AKA
advertising. The results obtained generally never match the level of noise
being generated. Most of the really impressive people I have worked with have
been very or perhaps too quiet or self-starters. These are the types of people
you need to seek out if you really want to doing something worthwhile.

------
MollyR
Passion is the biggest red flag from a company to me. It often means we want
to work you to exhaustion.

~~~
tachyoff
I've heard that argument, but recently I've started to disagree with it. I can
only speak to my limited experience, but my three prior gigs have all wanted
some amount of "passion", but never once was I expected to work 50/60+ hour
weeks as a result. There was crunch time once where we came in on a Sunday and
the company paid for lunch and dinner, but that was it.

Anyway, now when I see that companies want "passionate" people, I interpret it
to mean "convince us you're enthusiastic enough during the interview". It's
all a game of how much you can bullshit. I like to believe that most managers,
and especially most developers, realize that most code isn't "sexy", because
most software isn't "sexy" and most developers are working on most software.

Caveat: I work in the Midwest. Maybe things are different in Silicon Valley,
where every startup seems to fancy itself as changing the world.

~~~
whytaka
> "convince us you're enthusiastic enough during the interview". It's all a
> game of how much you can bullshit.

I agree with both you and GP and it's only convinced me more that 'passion' is
a toxic word.

------
Justsignedup
> have a pet project

I do. My daughter. She's vastly more interesting.

~~~
adamredwoods
I don't mention my family in an interview unless the interviewer mentions
their own family. I've had a couple of instances of (possibly) agism in
interviews, and I am doing my best to get hired.

~~~
scarface74
I always mention my family. I want to be "discriminated against". I want any
company I work for to assume I'm going to put my family first. I don't want to
work for a company that expects any less.

~~~
Justsignedup
I always mention in the following context:

"When necessary I will work overtime, but I prefer not to. I do not normally
stay extremely late because I have a child that I care to see."

If a company reacts negatively to that, I will not accept the job. If they
later complain I will remind them that I mentioned this before even starting.
And most people are understanding, or you just don't want to work for them.

------
zck
It's interesting how much advice given is "show people hiring you your
programming projects". I don't find this does so much for me, because projects
I want to work in in my spare time don't have any relation to the job I do.
Now, perhaps that might be my failure in managing my career, but I don't know
about that.

Now, those things might be _interesting_, but they're not as immediately
impactful as "I made an SPA for my personal site using React & Redux, so I'm
ready to use React & Redux to make SPAs at work". Very few people are hiring,
for example, to make Emacs packages, generative art, write anything in Lisp,
or a cigar box guitar.

And there's something exciting about doing the things I like only as much as I
like them -- if I had to make a dozen cigar box guitars every week, I wouldn't
enjoy it as much as I do the ones I have in progress.

------
scarface74
This article is definitely meant for someone just starting out. I was about to
dismiss this completely, until I realized I did something similar to get
started - back in 1994 and not on purpose.

I wrote a HyperCard stack that was basically a much better Eliza clone and
posted it on AOL. A guy from another college over 100 miles away saw it and
asked me to do a side project for him while I was in a no name college.

A year later, during the summer of my junior year, I put that on my resume and
along with my interview skills, I got a paid internship with housing in
Atlanta.

The next year after college with companies not exactly beating down my door to
hire me from a no name state college, I was offered a full time low paying job
as a computer operator back at the same company.

That served the purpose (along with help from my parents) of getting me back
to Atlanta from the small town I came from. They had one new programming
project that lasted until 99. I left, got my first real programming job and
from then on my resume, interview skills, and networking with recruiters made
it really easy to get jobs whenever I started looking.

I don't have a single line of code on GitHub, I don't have a blog, and I am on
LinkedIn but don't worry about curating it that much.

------
maxxxxx
"Our field changes constantly, so if you stop coding for one moment,
technology may pass you up."

In my view you can easily skip a few generations and nothing is lost. Its not
hard to catch up if you actually want to. And if you work on something
worthwhile for a while you most likely will rely on mature stuff that works.
Chasing the latest tech all the time seems a suckers game. Spend your time on
doing something well instead.

------
oceanghost
Young and Foolish...

