Ask HN: Would you hire me (passionate hobbyist programmer) to a dev position?

[gr3yh47]

I am not posting looking for a job offer, but just curious if I would be hire-able with my resume as it is. I own a house in a somewhat rural area so would likely need a remote position.

Here is my resume. I coded it by hand. Personal info scrubbed.

http://codepen.io/anon/pen/RNxJWp

[fecak]

The resume isn't good, but you appear to be employable. I definitely wouldn't lead off the resume with the word "Expert", unless you want to invite senior level engineers to try and take you down a notch with some difficult interview questions. The words "expert" and "entry-level" don't belong in the same sentence.

Some of the phrasing is sloppy - "start to finish" might be said better as "full lifecycle".

If you got a HS degree in 2004, you don't need to tell us you had summer jobs 10+ years ago. It doesn't add to the narrative.

Your professional skills section is all self-assessed things (critical thinker, team player, etc.) that add no real value. This type of fluff content takes away from the overall resume.

I wouldn't send this to an employer as a resume, but I do think you would get some response to a cleaned version of this. You do appear to be someone a company would at least interview.

[gr3yh47]

>I definitely wouldn't lead off the resume with the word "Expert", unless you want to invite senior level engineers to try and take you down a notch with some difficult interview questions. The words "expert" and "entry-level" don't belong in the same sentence.

They can bring it on on the systems engineering side. And as for programming, I am looking for an entry level position. How would you reword this?

I'll work on the other suggestions. thank you for the detailed feedback

[shayanjm]

No, I wouldn't hire you as-is. Probably not a first-choice intern either.

Some notes on why not:

+ Your web-sume looks rough. As pointed out by others, there are a number of typos (i.e: "and provide an opporunity") not to mention the design itself could use work. If you are GREAT at web design/UX you should spruce it up. Otherwise, kill it and move to a traditional resume. Knowing HTML5/CSS3 today is pretty meaningless, so showcasing that is sort of pointless.

+ There are tons of issues with your resume itself (i.e: "Excellent verbal and written communication skills." despite multiple typos and unclear flow) which need to be addressed. Cut the fluff, point to recent projects & address why they are cool/why anyone should care. Anything that you did 10+ years ago that isn't directly applicable to what you want to do in the near future has no place on the resume.

+ Your bitbucket projects are lackluster. You don't follow good git branching habits, your commits are non-atomic, your code is cumbersome and unfinished in many places. You also seem to use .py files as notes in non-standard ways, introducing weird artifacts and conventions to your projects.

Some notes on how to improve:

+ Learn how to use git productively in a team environment (this means no more working directly out of master). This is a good resource to that end: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

+ Learn better coding habits in whatever language(s) you are most comfortable with. Your bitbucket only has python code, so learn how to do things in more 'pythonic' ways. (i.e: Don't just stub notes inside .py files. Throw them inside a README.md or keep them in a secondary utility so you don't clutter the repo).

+ Sort of back to point #1 but deserves its own category: Learn how to use .gitignore. You have tons of artifacts in your repos that do not need to be/should not be there.

If you address all of the above, you'll be in a much better position to start qualifying for entry level dev openings.

[solomatov]

>+ Learn how to use git productively in a team environment (this means no more working directly out of master). This is a good resource to that end: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

But why everybody should use this kind of branching model? Branches have their overhead, namely time spent merging after several days of work.

[atmosx]

I'm impressed by your comments. Could take the time and make a similar assessment of my github[1] account?

It's highly unlikely for me to ever work as a developer but I'd like to know what you think of it, nevertheless :-)

[1] https://github.com/atmosx

ps. In case you take the time to have a look at my repo... Well thanks for your time :-)

(everyone else, feel free to drop a line or two about my repo if you like)

[pnathan]

Personally, I don't care about usage of git/hg. That can be dealt with on the job, and is no worse than hiring someone from another shop. As a matter of fact and recommendation, I don't think atomic commits are a great practice to follow in general anyway.

[eldavido]

I disagree with a lot of this. The guy is junior, this is stuff that can be taught on the job.

[edent]

I'm going to pick on one flaw of your CV and explain why it is problematic.

> Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Prove it.

Anyone can write that. As a hirer I see that sort of statement all the time and it means nothing. I want you to prove it.

Eg.

> I regularly write reports for the CEO and board. I produce a monthly 200 word summary and 5,000 word detailed background on our team's accomplishments. This has lead to increased recognition of our team's performance.

I can immediately see what you mean by that. I want someone who can do that level of reporting and is trusted to talk to senior people. Of course, you might by lying - but that's what the interview and probation are for.

Let's also look at this:

> Backup reporting app that pulled results from a backup status DB and used a local database of admins and projects to present reports in various filtered formats.

So what? What did that achieve?

How about...

> I created a backup database app which sped up report by 35%. Using multiple output formats reduced support calls to the team by half.

I want my support calls reduced by half! We need to get this person in!!!11!

Ok, I exaggerate a bit - but in every single line of your CV, you should be showing not telling.

[gr3yh47]

> Backup reporting app that pulled results from a backup status DB and used a local database of admins and projects to present reports in various filtered formats. So what? What did that achieve?

I wrote an app from scratch that filled a need in backup reporting. If i expand in the way you say my resume is going to end up 5 pages long. I want the kind of questions you're asking - during an interview.

[dyeje]

Honestly, it has an amateurish/outdated look to me. I think you'd be better off creating a nicely formatted, simple PDF. Either that or just make the page look more modern.

[falcolas]

I'd also, when you do start looking for work, tailor not just your CV, but also your resume to the job you're applying for. Use the same words the employer uses on their web site and in the job posting. Identify technologies you have in common with them (even if in passing), and mention those.

It will help you get an interview, if nothing else.

[timdaub]

Also, keep information short but impressive.

Startup founders and HR people tend to be very short on time and will most certainly not go through a wall of text just to figure out if you're good or not.

Your resume should make people interested in your skills and curious how you got there.

Once you have an interview you can still tell them all your additional information.

Furthermore: there's a cool open source project called json-resume that separates your resume data from design: https://jsonresume.org/themes/

[coreymaass]

Since you present your resume in code, I would have to take that into consideration. Your front-end skills are a good start, but I wouldn't hire you based on them alone. I honestly think you're putting yourself at risk but giving a potential employer the code of your resume to judge you by. The outcome is not as pretty as if you just created a standard resume, and I don't know that most people hiring would get that.

[jchendy]

To put it more bluntly, this resume is really just not very visually pleasing. I definitely wouldn't recommend drawing so much attention to your HTML/CSS skills unless they're really outstanding. And even then, going through Codepen is unnecessary because anybody who's going to be evaluating your front end code knows how to open the console and look at your code anyway.

[Justen]

Piggy backing off of this, I have an invite to https://careers.stackoverflow.com/ if you'd like to set up your resume there. I set up mine there and it's gotten me a lot of interviews.

[gr3yh47]

thanks. Front end skills are obviously not my highlight as can be seen from the content of the resume, but I wanted to demonstrate that I have at least good coding style/organization and have some front end chops to complement my other skills.

What of the general content of my resume?

[midnightmonster]

Summary: If your goal is a software development position, I would move "Highlights" above "Experience", move "Professional Skills" to the bottom of "Highlights" (who doesn't say they have excellent communication and teamwork skills?), and use either a nice resume template or a more favorable creative presentation.

I had to look at it three or four times before I could get past the presentation to actually read the resume.

The codepen presentation shows me that you are able to write basic HTML and CSS. These are useful skills, but not enough to get you in any door that I might be operating. If the design was good, this method of presenting might work to your advantage, but it's neither pretty nor easy to read and it shows mainly that you have not yet developed valuable design sense or taste. There are lots of jobs (development and otherwise) you can have without those, but it hurts your resume to draw attention to your probably-irrelevant weak points.

Alternatively, if you'd written it all in JavaScript using some trendy framework, I would at least see you as a programmer. If the code was clever or elegant, I would be interested even if the output wasn't very pretty.

I had to look back yet again to get past the experience section. The experience section made me think of you only as a sysadmin/network admin. I've looked at this five or six times now before I got to anything that would make me think of you as a possible developer.

[gr3yh47]

thanks. i took your advice about moving stuff around.

[baumy]

As a general rule, never call yourself an expert in anything. For one thing, you're probably not. Just as importantly, don't say that you're an expert, demonstrate that you are. Experts don't have to tell other people that they're experts. Going off nothing but the content of the resume, I see nothing to make me think you're an expert systems engineer, which makes me think you're overestimating your own skills, which is a huge red flag. Saying you have excellent communication skills (which again is saying instead of demonstrating), when the resume has multiple typos lends to the perception that you don't have the skills to back up your claims, which is enough to make me pass on the resume entirely.

Honestly, sorry to be harsh, but I'd scrap the whole thing and start over, taking into account all the good advice in here.

[jorgecastillo]

>don't say that you're an expert, demonstrate that you are.

There's so much awesome in this phrase, I am adding it to my .bashrc

[ukigumo]

I would suggest some changes to your resume, mainly to bring out your programming skills and expertise and then to highlight that you have significant work experience with system engineering so you are not a neophyte and can actually add something "else" to your team.

Starting with the Summary, I would change from "Expert Systems Engineer with a passion for programming seeking an entry level development position in a fast paced environment that will leverage my existing self-taught skills and provide and opporunity to grow as a developer." to

"Passinate programmer with a history of custom software development and systems engineering ...etc"

Good luck!

[gr3yh47]

i took your suggestion nearly verbatim. thanks.

[scrapcode]

I've wanted to ask something similar for a long time. I have a government job that has decent pay, but the schedule sucks, and I'm not challenged at all.

I have freelance full-stack experience, just nothing black-and-white professional wise other than sysadmin & electronics experience in the military. I recently moved to what could be considered an "up-and-coming" startup city and I've been tossing around the idea of pursuing a change of career to development, but I keep telling myself an entry-level gig while keeping my salary around $80k isn't a reasonable expectation. Does anyone here have any insight?

[exelius]

$80k is actually about right for an entry-level developer at a startup since you have some experience. Hell, most places will pay a kid fresh out of college $60-70k. I'd say go for it; what do you have to lose?

[scalesolved]

Based in the states I'd say you'd be hitting $80 within 1-2 years, perhaps quicker if you are a) good or b) using a tech that's hot right now.

I'd say work out timelines of how much you'd stand to lose if it took you 1,2,3 or 5 years to get past a certain point. I'd guess you end up recouping it in the long run but if you think it'd make you happier then you can't put a price on that.

[vinceguidry]

There are no entry-level programming jobs. You have to lie, cheat, and steal your way into a development career. Practically what this means is getting a company to take a chance on you. This isn't too hard because the market for web development talent is really hot right now and nobody wants to pay the salaries developers are commanding at the moment.

But getting a company to take a chance on you requires that you adhere to their expectations of you R.E. salary, what you're putting on your resume, what you tell them in the interview. Once you have some professional experience under your belt, then you can start to be pickier about who you're going to work with.

I was in your exact position two years ago, down to the sysadmin and electronics military experience. First job I took was $40K. It lasted three weeks before they let me go with a letter of recommendation, which I never ended up using. Second job was with Panasonic for similar money. I hated it so I found another job after about six weeks for where I'm at now. They hired me at $60K and I made enough noise after a year that they bumped me up to $75K. I was a Test Engineer at Panasonic but represented myself as a Web Developer, as that's what I was actually doing at Panasonic when I wasn't doing testing.

I'm active in the development community and while there's a hot market for talent, there's a lot of pickiness on both sides of the table, perhaps justifiably. I would love to hire an entry-level guy to work with me, but my company doesn't seem to want someone that's actually entry-level, but rather someone who is experienced but willing to take an entry-level salary. They lowball the experienced guys and won't even make offers to the unexperienced guys. So none of my candidates have worked out so far. Companies don't want to foot the bill for teaching someone how to code, perhaps because they don't want to pay all this money just to watch them walk out the door a year later.

[Justen]

I made this jump about a year ago. I was a DoD contractor out of college for 4 years, but I knew after ~2yrs that there weren't going to be any fun challenges. The closest you'd get would be prepping for the demo days to present to the higher-ups.

I started working with the MEAN stack to offset the boredom and after about 15 months I switched to a local startup. The pay was about 30% less, but I didn't have any professional experience on my resume (just my side project) so I saw it as more of a stepping stone. After ~6 months there, I applied to remote positions and ended up finding an awesome Senior level front end gig making quite a bit more compared to my DoD job. Also, I'm way happier now that I get to work with the cool things I used on my side projects. If our situations are as similar as I think, I'd say float your resume out there and see what bites. GL!

[k-mcgrady]

The salary is probably highly dependent upon the city you want hired in. From what I've seen for example salaries in the bay area tend to be much higher than anywhere else - even other cities that have a high cost of living.

[pcsanwald]

it depends on the city. In NYC, this is a reasonable expectation. If you're in baltimore, you should let me know, I might have a job for you.

[blisterpeanuts]

Your resume states that you're an "Expert Systems Engineer" but you don't give the number of years of experience. Based on the small number of positions listed, I'm guessing it's in the low single digits.

You mentioned college, but not whether you graduated. Did you go to a university? Graduate from university? If so, it's worth putting your degree. A degree doesn't necessarily mean you're a better programmer but it's an accomplishment nonetheless.

You state up front that you need remote work; does that mean you're far from large urban centers or corporate office parks? You're implying that you would not travel. That's going to make you a lot less employable, though there are a few remote positions out there. There are a lot more onsite positions that will let you convert to remote after a few months, once they've gotten to know and trust you.

Your "Personal Experience" section sounds like stuff that anyone in I.T. would have done, less than some people, perhaps more than others, but nothing impressive in there. In my opinion, the kind of personal projects that carry more weight would be verifiable contributions to well known open source projects, apps in the app store, and end-to-end involvement or total creation of a substantial project that you will be prepared to talk about in an interview.

It sounds like your main skill is Django and Python. There seem to be a lot of Python positions out there. Good luck, hope you get one of them.

[codegeek]

In Summary, you say "Expert" and then "entry level" in the same line. You don't want to do that. Take the word 'expert' out and if you indeed are an expert in something, show it to us in the experience details.

Professional skills section. This is a usual culprit for most entry level folks as we are all taught to add keywords like "great communication skills", "accomplished career history" etc which are just fluff. No need to mention these because either your Resume shows it or it does not. I would take the entire section out in my opinion.

Rest is pretty standard for entry level.

The idea of a good Resume is to demontrate what "you" accomplished in a particular position and what the "company" achieved with your help. This is easier to say and hard to put on paper. Think of real metrics even if as an entry level, you don't have much to show. Did you make your employer's life easy in any way ? Talk about it. Did you solve something that was pending for a while no matter how trivial ? Talk about it.

[gr3yh47]

Expert systems engineer. Seeking an entry level dev position. As they are distinct careers I don't understand why people are keying on that so hard.

other than that i will work on the rest. thank you for the feedback.

[peteorpeter]

I like your idea of coding up your resume - it shows competence and a desire to learn and build. I recently did the same thing.

But there is a first-impression problem. Obviously design skill is not what you are trying to demonstrate, but it's the first thing people see! Some people might read the code (and appreciate it), but even they won't jump right into doing that in the first few seconds.

I'd suggest copying the heck out of a good-looking online resume, and then subtly tweaking it to your taste. Subtly.

I'd also suggest hosting this on it's own. It will look more professional. (Github pages is a slick, free way to go.)

Your question was about whether someone would hire you as a dev. Yes, I suspect they would! Especially if you find an employer that has at least a passing interest in your operations/systems experience. I would look for a software company that works in this area (maybe one of your frequently used vendors?) - they'll eat it up that you know the domain.

[japesinator]

Piggybacking off of this, if anyone would be so kind as to give me their opinion on my resume at http://writes.co.de/resume.pdf, I would be very appreciative. For what it's worth, I'm looking for an internship over the summer

[grmarcil]

Blanket disclaimer: the opinions below are from a stranger on the internet, filter according to your own judgement

* The colored bits and the typesetting of your name are on the whimsical side of resume style. Probably okay if you're applying to tech companies, but consider a more traditional layout if you apply to a more traditional company (eg bank, consulting firm)

* In 'experience' and 'projects', take care to use active language wherever possible and highlight what you accomplished, not just what you focused on. Ingersoll and Katie School could use revision in particular, the others look pretty on-target

* What sort of CS independent study and research have you done at Illinois State? You have the page space to be more specific, and can tailor this to the job you're applying to. Similar for Bloomington Central: consider if you can make "focus on mathematics and the sciences" more specific.

* Stanford: what about Cryptography from Dan Boneh? Did you complete the course? Did you receive a certificate or ranking?

* You might consider revising "interests" and "programming" into one section "skills" or "expertise". Narrow these to match the job.

* Like others have said, I am not a big fan of the 'Student, Hacker, Adventurer' tagline.

[delluminatus]

It seems quite attractive overall, but I think the dark background header and the partially colored text are a little gratuitous. What matters in a resume is the content -- the experience and skills -- not the title or the headings. I would consider moving the emphasis away from the headings and title to the actual content as much as possible.

Also, it is odd that the job experience descriptions are italicized where the education and projects descriptions are not.

Finally, (and you may know this already, but I am just mentioning it for completeness' sake), you should adjust your resume depending on the position you're seeking. So for instance if you are looking for an internship at a company that is not very interested in functional programming, you might want to change or reorder your interests, as well as reword the descriptions if needed.

[theVirginian]

The colors are kind of odd, I would just go without them, and I would remove "hacker" from the title as that term has become meaningless and outworn to most technical people, but is still threatening to technically illiterate people. Other than that It looks great.

[scalesolved]

Nice and neat but I'd still include some detail about what your passions are and a little bit more about yourself. The list of interests is too packed and nothing lets me know why you dig these particular areas. Overall it feels high quality and is a lot better than a lot of resumes I've seen from developers with years in the field. Good luck with your search!

[lbradstreet]

Definitely a bit on the whimsical side but has a lot of interesting stuff I respect. It'd work on me, but maybe not on a lot of people who might hire you - though that may act as a good filter for your sake. I'm not sure.

A agree with the post below about the adventurer bit though. It makes the rest a bit more over the top. I also agree with the posts about the colours.

[wingerlang]

> Student, Hacker, Adventurer

Does text like this really sell "you" to people? I find them quite pretentious-ish.

[6d0debc071]

Would I? Nope.

Big issue? Anyone can say they've done something - but it doesn't give me any idea of how well you've done it; what sort of constraints you operated under and what your results were like. Were you doing the bare minimum for a year or two? I won't know based on your CV. There's the inexperienced kid who just gets a few projects thrown their way and can say they worked on them, and there's someone who absolutely blew the problem out of the water and created a lot of value... but unless they talk about their achievements on their CV? They're indistinguishable from one another.

[ThrustVectoring]

The company I work for isn't set up to incorporate remote workers, so no.

That reasoning is pretty much entirely about my companies position, and not your strength as a job candidate. Similar reasoning happens at tons of other companies. I'd recommend sending out 100-200 applications to see if you can find a company that's in a position to hire someone like you. It's a fairly cheap way of getting information.

[duval]

Seeing many negative comments here. As someone getting to grips with programming and who already has a paid position I do sometimes wonder what I would need to be doing / know to have a more advanced position.

What do people want, and how should I say I have what people want (assuming i do)

[solomatov]

I wouldn't hire you.

What's missing is some kind of formal education in the basics of computer science. You have a good start of coursera algorithms, but I would add to it more advanced courser of the same kinds, i.e. algorithms and data structures, programming languages, etc.

[maxk42]

I would far prefer to hire a passionate hobbyist to someone who went to school just to get credentials for something that pays well. People with passion tend to improve their skills on their own and genuinely care about the craft.

But you can't hire based on their resume.