followup to got the job:
Seth Godin has a post on Why Bother Having a Resume while people from HedgeHogLabs has their own take based on their experience with their own lead developers: Good Developers Dont Need Resumes
from seth godin’s Why Bother Having a Resume:
Not just for my little internship, but in general. Great people shouldn’t have a resume.
Here’s why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, “oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,” and boom, you’re out.
Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just more fodder for the corporate behemoth. That might be fine for average folks looking for an average job, but is that what you deserve?
If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?
How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?
and from HedgeHogLabs blog:
There is no surprise then that only 1 of our 3 existing team members actually had to submit a resume to us, which we never read twice. All 3 were hired from our network of influence either because we worked with them previously or because they came highly recommended from people we knew.
The issues is close to my heart right now because I got a job inspite of my resume. I got the job because someone, a friend believed that I can learn fast and have a longer/farther horizon than other candidates.
How Do I Know This? because he told me. He told me they had the perfect candidate that they interviewed the day before. He had all the right years of experience and at all the right tools. As for me I had barely 8 months of experience programming professionally, and my tech stack skill sets was not divergent but I just always seem to pick differently with what is the norm.
Industry norm in the philippines is cvs, I picked svn, eclipse is the java standard IDE, I love using netbeans (I’ve never used eclipse). I’ve no experience using spring framework, I could go on and on.
The fact is it is nice to be counted upon, to be trusted and when you are trusted and you are a nominally trustworthy person you do your damnest not to fail, to let the one who trusted you down. It is a simple yet effective human bias. A human need to be trusted. This is so divergent with company planning of plan A,B,C even upt to Z that we seldom believe this. You better trust me when I say that I am sure not going to let anybody down.
Going back to the topic of this post, I got the job because someone believed in me (My first job was like this but I charge that to being childish and irresponsiple, that’s another post that I am still not ready to do.). By all objective measures bar one I was the riskier choice but sometimes people have to take chances and your resume is not what they are taking a chance on. They are trusting that you will perform not because of your resume but inspite of it. They see what you have done in the past, how well you have done it and they believe you have the capability to learn on the job and think with your feet. I am slowly getting my groove back, thank God!
For Me And A Few Others Who May HAve Started To Lose Hope!
The link leads to an article about a 63 year old man (Avraham Trahtman ) that solves the road coloring problem.
Link Here
This is inspiring because advances in math and science usually happens early on a mathematicians life.
A Toast To You! You Are an Inspiration!
Illegal Immigrants Rule 20080326 edition
Coming from the philippines where an estimated 1 million Filipino Illegal Immigrants staying in the USA, immigration is an issue I deal with everyday. From family members trying to convince you to be an illegal immigrant (Had a multi entry Visa til may this year), online friends who are illegals, and people who plan to be this is an issue that you cannot fence sit. My take has always been consistent. Opportunity is everywhere and specially in our wild wild west like country. If you are going abroad to study, learn, to work with the best then well and good, But if you are leaving because the children of cowards are better off in so called first world nations. I am being a little harsh, but the fact is most people who have left are the people who the philippines has blessed with the resources to leave. Just think of how many UP and Pisay alumni are overseas and you’d be hard headed to no not understand my frustration.
from Kevin Drum Through Brad De Long:
link here
Bottom line: “This year’s report results in […] a substantial increase in the number of working-age individuals contributing payroll taxes, but a relatively smaller increase in the number of retirement-age individuals receiving benefits in the latter half of the long-range period.” Give or take a bit, it turns out that this shores up the Social Security system to the tune of around $13 billion per year. Thanks, illegal immigrants!
Got The Job!
Whoa,
I just got the job, though I am not proud for the fact that I probably got it because one of the people who decided was a friend.
Can’t think of that right now just have to do my best with this job and make sure the friend doesn’t lose face from his decision!
Been studying the technology stack of the company and I was a little worried that I’d waste my time when monday passed and no one called, better late than never.
Need to make this work! Finally I am an employed CODER/Hacker again!
Losing (Half) My Mnd
That’s How I feel Whenever I Don’t Have wikipedia, google and the whole internet and a programming language and library extending my mind. I’ve been developing a longish post on this and on wikipedia and on mind enhancement aroind 6 articles all in all a series if i can presume the audacity to try writing One. Hope I Succeed. (I Think I will With The Help Of Chuck’s Editing Skillz)
Can't Seem To Get My Groove!
Been up around 36 hours or so, 8 hour of which was spent between Dota and Starcraft!
Note To Self: IT IS A CRIME TO WASTE TIME!
Site Management Stuff 2008 03 18
The final release candidate of wordpress 2.5 is available for beta testing, I am upgrading over the weekend and will explore the new version of wordpress (signed up as a beta tester, to give back to the community!), slow posting for me ths weekend!
Love Means Never Having To Say I'm Sorry part 2
continuation of part 1.
“What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.”–Oliver Barrett IV, (Erich Segal Love Story)
Love Story is one of the few movies that I’ve seen at least 20 times, and that still makes me cry uncontrollably. I’ve all but given up on finding true love, so it especially hurtful for me that what is denied to me is so harshly stolen from oliver and jenny.
There’s this one scene where oliver and jenny fights because oliver gets mad at jenny for trying to thaw the ice between oliver and his dad. This is their first major fight. Oliver runs through the campus like a mad man trying to find jenny, the music sets the scene and the actor playing oliver delivers. The whole thing ends with oliver returning home, finding jenny by the steps of their apartment, as he is about to say sorry jenny lifts her and and stops him, saying “Love Means Never Having To Say I’m Sorry.”
That’s preety much how I feel about decisions in my life. I try to live consciously. I try to be self aware of the different things happening in my life. I try to make the best decisions possible in any situation that I am in the middle of. I weigh every variable and try to control for variables that affect my decisions such as, how does the effect on people I love affect my decision. I weigh everything and in the end pull the trigger on most decisions in my life with no regret. I have nothing to be sorry for, any decision I made I made knowingly and wholeheartedly. Somethings may have not entered my calculations. I may have overlooked or underestimated things and probably made a better decision with more time and introspections. But in life time is limited and your information is always imperfect. You will never make any decision if you let yourself be paralyzed by analysis, fear of the unknown, or the uncertainty of anything that can be considered trailblazing.
I have many quirks most of which are common enough not to engender any reaction outside of boredom. If I would fancy vanity, the expression of this would be how much I think about anything I do. The only times I am spontaneous would probably be in moments of anger, and those moment are seldom, but bunched up, yet occur in long intervals. I never allow myself to feel sorry for me and in turn any one. I believe that within the framework of God, we have free will and in that free will we have the power to shape our lives. I will never concede that we are powerless. I will never concede that our nation, that my/our lives are hopeless. I look around me and in those fleeting moments where a narcissist looks beyond himself I see only three kinds of people. One are those who are afraid, always blaming someone else, the government, his/her situation, his/her surroundings, Two the borderline, not knowing much of anything and yet their hope lies in the fact that they are still not within that negative self-feeding cycle of self pity, that most people of type One are, Three are the people who have No Apologies/Never Going To Say I’m Sorry Types.
They see the injustice in this world, the pain people go through and probably the narcissistic nihilism so prevalent in modern society and yells “UP YOURS”. The are the men and women who cannot be stopped. These are the people who may not eventually win but would never be losers. These are the people who say “Why can’t I dream?”,”What makes me different from people who looked up saw the moon and would not stop till man has finally touched its surface”,the person who do not doubt “That everyday is the real Time Of Your Life” .
I walk the streets and see a nation’s youth whose ambition is to go to greener pastures. To find a better life. I see them. Some of them are my friends. Some are most dear to me. But when I talk to them my hear cringes. I see the youth of our nations without heart, without courage, without resolve. I see people foreign to the simple truth that you can succeed anywhere, a nation whose greatest ambition is to not have to work hard.
(This is ironic for I am the one without work. I am an invalid telling working people they fear hard work. I would like to reply but this is not the post.)
For what is it that most people use as a reason for their flight, “For My Children To Have A Better Life.”
But what you are actually saying is that I am a shallow person beholden to the consumerist dictums of the modern senseless world. I want to raise my child in places where I am second class citizen, working 2-3 jobs just so that I could make LVMH or Mercedes, richer. I have no dreams whatsoever and my children would probably never be as successful as the son and daughters of Chinese,Japanese, and Korean immigrants. I just raised them to be cowards and slackers and If by some miracle of circumstance my child succeeds I would make it seems that he/she was a genius with boundless energy and charm, not the persistent and hardworking person that he or she probably is, Why because people from the Philippines never understand hardwork, they understand illicit trade, winning the lottery, marrying a rich husband/wife, but hard work, anyone who succeeds through hard work is suspect. (Why?This is for another longish ranting post)
This wasn’t supposed to be written like this, but I can either write following my mental outline or I can write the way that makes my blood pressure rise and Thank God I’m Alive!
Would you ever choose otherwise?
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
— Teddy Roosevelt
Best Sentence Today 2008 03 17
Steve Jobs :On what drives Apple employees
“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.”
Can you honestly say this with what you are doing with your life? Are you actively trying to find something great to do with the great gift of life God has given you? Are you continually making excuses and taking the easy way out? Is how you feel during leisure an order of magnitude different(greater,happier) than what you feel during work?
If you do not examine yourself right now and ask yourself these questions when will you ever find out? If you continue to go the remote control path what do you think will happen. You are never going to be really happy by just going where other people tell you to go. Ask yourself these questions , and afterwards after reflecting on your answers think of somebody whom you trust and who would be honest to you. Find that person, and ask him about life, ask about the things you admire about his life, find out how he got to where he is, and about the principles tht guided him.
In an anime Full Metal Alchemist
there is this principle of equivalent exchange: To Obtain Anything Something Of Equal Value Must Be Sacrificed.
You have to sacrifice now for a life well spent, remember the old adage “you can’t have your cake and eat it”. It takes sacrifice now and the pain that comes with going your own way.
Never Give Up On Your Dreams!
Follow Your Heart!