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Showing posts from October, 2024

Driving Chocolates

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They say an important part of any fitness regimen is your diet. With this in mind, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that "Driving Chocolates" are not "a thing" and just something I invented as a feeble way to dignify my habit of stashing chocolates in the glovebox so I can have something to snack on when I'm on the road. That being said "Pocket Chocolates" are still very much a thing - and fun fact: you can have pocket chocolates while driving. 
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New Music Keeps Me Young

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Sitting near someone who doesn't realize their laptop is no longer connected to their bluetooth headphones, and they're now blasting music out loud. But I'm not mad. hashtag#IfItsTooLoudYoureTooOld Given they're ~15 years younger than me, I'm being introduced to some good stuff that the algorithms don't bother serving me since I've aged into a new demographic. Already adding a few songs to my rotation.  Now - the question is, do I make him dislike his stuff by giving it my Old-Person™ approval and saying "This stuff is great!" or do I validate his sense of unique generational identity by giving him the ol' stern "Tsk tsk tsk" ?
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"Your app makes me fat" by Kathy Sierra

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"Your app makes me fat" - by Kathy Sierra  is one of my favorite articles. Sometime mid-2023  her site, Serious Pony, went down and the article is no longer available. I was able to retrieve it on the Wayback Machine , but since I reference it often I wanted to also preserve it here. All the brilliant credit goes to Kathy - you can support her by checking out her book:  Badass: Making Users Awesome Your app makes me fat By Kathy Sierra Originally published: July 24, 2013 In 1999, Professor Baba Shiv (currently at Stanford) and his co-author Alex Fedorikhin did a simple experiment on 165 grad students.They asked half to memorize a seven-digit number and the other half to memorize a two-digit number. After completing the memorization task, participants were told the experiment was over, and then offered a snack choice of either chocolate cake or a fruit bowl. The participants who memorized the seven-digit number were nearly 50% more likely than the other group to choose c...
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Work Experience vs Professional Experience

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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 ...
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Let's Clear Up The Ambiguity!

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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...
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FAQs for a Software Engineering Hiring Manager

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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...
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7 Steps to Writing an Amazing Resume

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  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...
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7 Steps to Building your Portfolio MVP

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Often when I suggest to coders that they build a portfolio, I'll hear back: "I don't need one..." "With all the effort it takes to apply, where will I find the time?" Simply put, having a portfolio's never going to hurt your chances at landing a job - it can only help. That second question is where a lot of struggle - because applying to jobs can be time consuming. Especially if you're wrapping up a bootcamp, or having to manually type in your resume info after uploading your resume. That's why I made these 7 steps which, when done correctly, can really help you stand out with a hiring manager. And, the best part is, it should only take you 2 days. Being the Agile-Obsessive that I am, it's all about maximizing value while minimizing effort. Fix links to your Resume, GitHub, LinkedIn, etc. at the top where they're always accessible. Link to everything here - and then remove all other links on your Resume except your Portfolio link . It sa...
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