
I Am Unhireable - bryanrasmussen
https://dev.to/vorahsa/i-am-unhireable-541d
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L_226
In my experience (granted; anecdotal, limited, etc.) people who enter a job
that is mostly coding (job title notwithstanding) and who come from an
academic background often tend to write seriously unmaintanable, borderline
illegible code.

I think this is because they are not used to having other people read and work
with their code, especially if they have just graduated and never worked in
industry. This is potentially justifiable in an academic setting where stream-
of-consciousness type programming is acceptable for a barebones proof of
concept, but attempting to work with 1000+ LOC functions with non-descriptive
variable names etc. is not only not acceptable in modern software, it is
ungracious to your coworkers.

Unfortunately this can sometimes be coupled with a good dose of hubris ("I
have a PhD and you don't!"), and efforts to provide constructive criticism are
often met with anger/apathy/belittling/ignorance. Their pride, which may be
well be deserved within the narrow field of their academic work, unfortunately
doesn't mean that they automatically know how to write maintainable software
and also potentially hinders them learning how to. This is perhaps why there
is a trend to dismiss "academic candidates".

That being said, some of the best software engineers I have ever worked with
hold doctorates - and people worth working with will usually admit their
limitations anyway. This is not limited to those with an academic background
in general, as accepting our faults is the first step in adressing them.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> Unfortunately this can sometimes be coupled with a good dose of hubris ("I
> have a PhD and you don't!")

Is that sentiment actually common? I don’t know any other phds who would ever
bother pulling that out for coding (maybe writing a research paper, even that
is dubious); even in a research lab where phds are more normalized but there
are still lots of people without.

I hear this stated online, but it always sounds more like some insecurity on
either side going on.

We do get the shaft on hiring because we are often overqualified, meaning we
might bail quickly when a better opportunity shows up. I can’t really blame
smaller companies for worrying about that, especially in this day and age of
$300k salaries.

~~~
bigred100
I have the same question. In my lab the way you make fun of someone for
writing a horrible monstrosity of code is to call it “research quality” or
“Ph.D quality” or something.

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arvinsim
I have learned to become wary of companies asking for passion. More often than
not, it is usually a buzzword exploited by some companies to make you do more
work for less pay.

~~~
CyberFonic
Yup! Passionate, inexperienced programmers are more impressive. They will
write 10,000 lines of complicated code using a dozen frameworks and libraries.
The experienced old timer will get the same done with 2000-3000 lines and only
1-2 libraries.

A further problem is that the impressive code becomes difficult to debug and
extend as the requirements evolve. And of course with 2-3 years at a job, the
original developer has long skipped to another job, leaving another junior
developer befuddled with the "legacy".

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marcodave
IMHO it all boils down to "unhireable... where?". Of course you're hireable,
there are plenty of places for people in their 40s with plenty of experience.
There is a bias of course in Hacker News towards young fast&furious companies
in Silicon Valley where it appears that if you're not a ninja bro coder you're
out, but it's just a fraction of the cake.

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nickthemagicman
All these criteria make sense except for the PhD. That seems like one of those
humble brags.

~~~
jarofgreen
I've heard companies express wariness of people with PHD's. It's a stupid
reason to reject someone - as are all the points he makes - but yeah, I've
heard that.

~~~
zaphod12
I am personally wary of folks with PhDs. It's certainly not a reason to reject
an application, but I don't really consider a positive, either (for a general
software engineer - if I need a systems engineer and you've been doing systems
engineering research, then different story).

It's just a completely different way of thinking about problems and I have had
trouble with folks who weren't able to change their mode of thinking. If I was
hiring a researcher, I wouldn't consider 5 years of coding at tiny startups to
be an advantage. It's really the same thing - demonstrated skills at a
related, but somewhat different enterprise.

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solarkraft
I'm not a fan of click bait titles. You're very hireable.

~~~
Rainymood
No one is, but the matter of fact is that you still clicked. We are fickle
animals.

