Messy paper, messy mind.

This was my early morning Saturday view. I flipped on the light, and was struck out how cozy and inviting my desk was. It energized me to jump right into a side project I've been working on.

Years ago, I had a long conversation with close friend (or was it a close conversation with a friend who was feeling long?) about how much our environment can impact our mood, energy and motivation. I've always prided myself on being able to work anywhere, in any environment (cut to scene of people yelling at each other over a game of ping pong while 'We Built This City' loops for the 7th time) but my best work has always been in environments designed to foster it.

The conversation reminded me of a thing my oldest brother drilled into me (somethign that had been drilled into him by a highs school teacher): Messy paper, messy mind.

Doodling in the margins of a dog-eared notebook using any available pen may seem fine at first but the discomfort gets to you. The ink starts to bleed, the pages tear - the small pet-peevish inconveniences build up over time that your energy, your motivation, your ability to stay focused, your desire to keep going are siphoned off slowly.

It reminds me of Kathy Ceceri's article 'Your App Makes Me Fat' - the more friction we put between the user and their goals (or in this case, ourselves and our projects), the more we drain them & ourselves.

Passion projects deserve more.

Popular

Work Experience vs Professional Experience

Image
In reviewing a bunch of resumes this week, I noticed quite a lot of resumes with a  "Work Experience"  section. In each of those resumes, people had de-valuing some very valuable  experience - and I write that with no exaggeration. The problem is people were looking at their experience purely through the "Job Title/Relevancy" lens and had reduced their experience down to a list of discrete, random, disconnected jobs. No interconnectedness, no narrative thread weaving through it all. As much as you may feel some jobs have no way of being connected, the reality is  you   are always the connection . To not connect them on your resume is to lose all that growth, knowledge, skills, impact, value, and trajectory. In other words - you lose the " You " in the resume. I recommended they start with a small change. Reword "Work Experience" to "Professional Experience" because, ultimately, every single job they had was in service of building their ...
Read more

Let's Clear Up The Ambiguity!

Image
Job seeking is hard - especially when you factor the ambiguity around expectations, the lack of transparency and consistency around process. It's frustrating dealing with the sheer subjectivity of everyone's opinions. Just think of even the basics: How long should your resume really be? Traditional black and white, or modern? Should you include a headshot? Oh - and cover letters - are those needed? Is anyone actually reading the cover letter? What are they looking for? Is there a bias for people with a more traditional background? Worst of all: The dreaded typo  that you catch only after applying to your dream job.  Are typos really going to cost you the opportunity??? To help bring some clarity to the process, I surveyed a bunch of hiring managers. The results were really interesting, and very illuminating.     If you're on the job hunt, I hope this information helps out! One final note: My recent post,  7 Steps to Writing an Amazing Resume , factors a lot of...
Read more

FAQs for a Software Engineering Hiring Manager

Image
Technical Interviews have evolved a lot since the early I transitioned from being a Software Engineer to an Engineering Manager. Particularly in the post-Covid era, there's been a greater emphasis on the person, which I think is an important and welcome change. Over the decade of interviewing hundreds of coders, I've also had the pleasure of working with various bootcamps, colleges, and hundreds of individual job seekers on LinkedIn. Across all the changes over the past years, across the various locations and mediums, something remained consistent throughout: The questions I get asked.  With that in mind, I thought - why not make a FAQ from my perspective as a hiring manager? While this is my perspective, it's based off years of observation and supporting data. But that being said, advice is not fact. You may disagree with certain points, and that's OK. Opinions we disagree with allow us to better understand our own views. At best, I hope these responses help you...
Read more

Where is MySpace Headed?

Image
MySpace seems to be trying to condense the internet under a single domain name. Pearl Jam has a MySpace account. Weezer has one. Just about every band has a MySpace account to host their music, and operate as a fan club. Their own websites used to do this, but with MySpace their websites have become redundant.  I'm thinking this will cause MySpace to collapse. It's trying to offer too much while not offering much. It's trying to BE the internet, but by simplifying it down to what the majority of users want on a website. Thinking back to websites of 1997, 1998, the more personalize websites which may have had a lot of dancing hamsters, midi songs playing in the background, silly scripts that changed your mouse icon and had stars that followed the mouse, and yet offered no real content. That feels like what MySpace is today, only now it's even easier to set up, and even less likely to house meaningful content (he wrote on his all important website; I get the irony.) Many ...
Read more

7 Steps to Writing an Amazing Resume

Image
  Since sharing my resume template  I've received plenty of feedback from job seekers, HR and hiring managers - all of whom value its purpose. Two (now former!) jobseekers even shared that as soon as they used my template, they were getting calls. Something about this template works, and given the traction it's getting others, I wanted to share - in more detail - why  this approach works so well.  Before continuing, let me give an important disclaimer: This resume isn't a miracle cure that's going to land anyone their dream job. Unless they're filled with lies, resumes are only as good as the candidate themselves. But they can also be a whole lot worse. This template and approach are all about maximizing the potential candidates have by highlighting and summarizing key areas.  Last point before beginning: If you don't know me, it's worth stating this advice comes from more than a decade of having hiring a broad range of coders: straight out of college, hig...
Read more