Your page looks great because you have great skills and achievements to show. Remember that. You are getting A LOT of attention in HN, that will sure be picked up by another places on the interwebs.
So, my piece of advice: do not use this fame and fall in temptation to start capitalizaing solely on your personal brand, giving lectures, interviews, writing books on how to be hired by the hottest startups and other distractions. Keep focusing on working hard to build things. You are doing a great job on this so far. Congrats!
If you already know how to build simple things, why not write some books and get publicity if you have the chance? It would only increase demand for things that you are hoping to build in the future. I can build things like crazy and I'm still hoping to write a book...someday...
As a 20 year old I'm frustrated that your eye for design is way better than mine, but at the same time, I'm also frustrated that you're listing projects and they're not on your github, nor are they apparently deployed at all... The images aren't hyperlinks.
* Wire clothing - there are a billion clothing brands with wire in the name, which one is yours?
* VIDBY - google search shows nothing in first 3 pages.
* Mobile App - where can I see it?
* upload.it - URL definitely does not resolve to the site pictured.
I've mocked websites and apps before too, but I always am sure to note that I've mocked it, not built it. If you're a front end web designer, there's no shame in that, there's a lot you can do with that. This site and eStavebny are more than enough to impress people. If the other stuff was available to look at, that'd be cool too. But don't mislead people, because if they're going to hire you, they are going to want to look deeper.
Last month my dad was telling me about the interns he was interviewing for this summer. He said he was most frustrated by the amount of overselling that these kids were doing for themselves. No, your management experience of managing your highschool robotics team is not relevant at a fortune 500 company. Related to this is the problem with college admissions. Everyone has a 4.0 with multiple APs and played varsity sports and can write a boring essay. Everyone is afraid to admit what they don't know. And I don't mean unknown unknowns, I mean known unknowns.
I'm coexisting in this problem just as much as you are, and I just want to say that I hate this. I wish we could all be honest with our skills and I wish employers would appreciate that honesty more. But we can't afford to be modest and honest, so I guess can't fault you for doing what we all do.
Hey Marek, I see you've been accepted at UCL, would you like to check out what London is like?
We at HackCampus http://hackcampus.io/ could offer you a 10-week internship at some amazing startups (GoCardless, SwiftKey, Kano and more) in London this summer. It's well-paid, and we'll give you free accommodation over the summer with a batch of other awesome student hackers like yourself.
Wanted to apply on your website, during registration received error 500, then CSRF verification failed. Request Aborted.
And then My username is taken.
Reproduce-able too, I guess I should stop being admin and go into QA? :D
Hello, I've just applied for that amazing opportunity. Thanks for posting. One thing I've noticed for which I'm too shy to send you an e-mail is if you go to :
Do you have any students or know or any place that would be interested in interning for digital marketing, growth hacking, social media related work? And does the payment come from the start-up or from sort of fund you have setup?
Would love to chat further if you have time. Kam[at]krmmalik dot com
If you guys are real "hackers", why can't I just log in with my GitHub? I mean I don't want to fill out a custom username/password for your site when all my coding related stuff can be regulated from GitHub Auth.
One piece of advice: don't put C, C++, etc on your resume unless you're really comfortable with those languages and want to focus on them. Your resume highlights your design skills and projects using web technologies. Great! Focus on those!
For example, your Github has no examples of C programming skills and your resume doesn't highlight any projects where you'd likely use C. If you were interested in getting an internship where you'd primarily be programming in C you'd be better off focusing on highlighting projects that interest you which use that language. You'd stand out if you had contributions on Github or your own libraries or applications on Github written in C.
he says 'a basic understanding of...', and 'code a simple app using...' it's clearly not the focus, but i don't see any problem with that. the only thing i take away is 'he won't run away in terror if i show him some c++'.
A lot of interviewers like to ensure that you're comfortable with pointers and the distinction between the stack and the heap. It can be nice to list a familiarity on your resume just to let people know that you're comfortable with those kinds of questions.
I don't see anything exceptional about this. There are a lot of tutorials and a lot of sites guiding you through building a site like that.
You should never put yourself in a situation to ask for something. You must put others in the situation to ask for you. Making a website like countless others and having no substantial code to back off what you are claiming, won't put you in front of countless of other talented people that are a lot more humble than you. Talented companies have talented eyes seeking for talent, don't put only a good mask on. I wanted to say this, because I want you in a good company and I hope that you will get the best of life. Keep working on your path: mastering a framework is tenfold valuable than a "simple understanding". Regards
I agree though. This is not exceptional or very impressive. I don't really get why this has more upvotes than the 14 year old kid who posted a relatively way cooler site that utilized a bunch of APIs, etc.
I'm a 20yo college student...definitely feeling inferior for not being this proactive as a high schooler. But I'm currently in my second internship and I can definitely say I got hired because of personal projects such as this that highlight your skills and your interest in using those skills inside and outside of class/work environments, so great job and good luck!
This guy is selling out hard. Coming from a guy with a more active GitHub and projects, I don't see how this guy is any different than any American college kid.
Since he's from Slovakia, does he have the visa status to work in the US? Will a startup go through H1-B process for a summer intern?
Also, if he doesn't go through the formal visa process and tries to do his summer internship with a visitor visa, he may be banned from the US for 10 years. Given that he's publicly publicizing coming to the US to work, it would be very easy for USCIS to block his entry into the US.
He doesn't say that he wants to work in the US though, or maybe I have missed it.
But there are some pretty cool startups in Europe too, and given that Slovakia is part of Schengen he wouldn't have any problems with the visa if he were to work in Europe.
Very nice. Just one tip – in one of your testimonials Cristina uses the word "pedant". She probably meant you're good with details (or that you're a good teacher), but at least in the US, that word almost always has the negative connotation of being too concerned with details.
> "There is still 1 month, 1 day, 6 hours, 55 minutes and 21 seconds until summer, which gives me a lot of time to learn new skills that you might need!"
I don't know if that's the case here, but a lot of European colleges require summer internships. Compensation is sometimes permitted, but status of employment must be an internship.
In the US tech industry, internships are actually fantastic, fantastic investments. You get paid incredibly well, get good names on your resume without 2+ year long commitments, get to network with a variety of people (2-4 companies/regions/industries in 2-4 years) and gives you amazing bargaining power when you head into a full time position.
It's been my experience that tech internships are paid some reasonable fraction of what a full timer would get in exchange for a more interested program of work - I get paid 50% of what a full timer does, but I get more training and more flexibility in what I work on.
A lot of places won't hire someone full-time for just the summer. I was in the same situation: I could have applied for a full-time job, but I can't be full time once school starts up again.
Agreed, if indeed he is using "internship" to mean "unpaid internship". Far too much importance is placed on unpaid work these days, particularly in tech, and it just isn't needed. He clearly has enough experience to spend his summer doing actual work, and should be compensated for it.
Doing an internship is sometimes more 'profitable' than not doing one. If you go with one of the big companies, you'll have a similar to full-time new grad salary plus free accommodation of really high quality that would normally cost you in the Bay Area easily upwards of 3k a month.
Listen to this person. This is the one glaring thing I noticed, it makes your wording sound stereotypically Eastern European, and is jarring in comparison to a document that otherwise flows quite well.
Small advice: do something with those brackets. They are in the middle of the page and their misalignment with coding skills section is infuriating (at least for me).
I increasingly come to expect this sort of product since kids coming up expect their products to be like this.
He may be a leader in this, but the group coming up definitely will be demonstrating the "Yes, and..." attitude in terms of design and features. The new kids invigorate the game, which is great.
One thing - pretty much everything you wrote is about you...Which is great, but it would be more compelling if removed any mention of yourself and made it all about the company who is going to hire you.
Hey your resume looks impressive. Can you tell me how you made the resume? Latex or anything? The design and presentation of skills is great! I'm 20 too and want to update my resume.
I'm confused - where does he want to work? Domain is "hostmeinca" which I read as "Host me in Canada" but could mean California - and he doesn't really specify anything except that he lives in Slovakia right now.
I would love to make a resume page like this, and have the balls to publicize it, I just have this super strong aversion to do such a thing because of the amount of creepy people on the internet.
Guess I'll be that guy - the design and content is nice and well done, but this is just bootstrap copy/paste to me; I don't see a lot of "coding talent" evident.
Not to say he doesn't have it, but creating a site like this basically requires finding a similar one and learning what classes to put into your bootstrap markup.
For what its worth, I agree with you. That is to say, I feel like a lot of the people here giving out praise are being a bit excessive with it and this is simply a flavour of the day paint by numbers web page. Still, it's a good effort for a kid in college looking to get an internship.
If he were sending a standard printed resume through the mail then you might have a point. This online version is something different and I doubt that anyone looking for talent would disqualify him for having his picture on there.
At the same time, most companies check your social media profiles online and some even decide if they invite you to interviews based on what they see there.
and they say geography isn't destiny. a design like this can get a solo founder a $2M valuation on an idea in the valley (making him an instant millionaire), whereas a slovakian is trying hard to close an internsihp (meaning he hasn't gotten $8/hr, or 1/250000th of that amount.)
As long as you have enough money to pay tuition without scholarships (and paying the non-resident rate)... sure!
Being sarcastic here, finding a job (or studying as an undergraduate) in the U.S. as a foreigner unfortunately has very little to do with skills. Unless you have something very unique that a company decides to seek you out for!
I managed to graduate high school near the end of the early 90s recession, university at the beginning of the dot com bust, and B-School in the beginning of the 2008 meltdown.
Good god can we please stop with the photos? Do you people really want to go back to the 1950s where a photo was required with a resume? Do you really want your potential employers to be judging you on your looks/race/ethnicity at the resume stage? It may be beneficial to you (you are the "correct" race and gender and you look young and not ugly) but for those of us that aren't - we don't want pressure to include photos because that will make our resume look unattractive to potential employers.
This isn't a submitted resume, it's a marketing site.
Would you have all marketing sites also strip out photo portraits? A ton of enterprise services have landing pages with the portrait of an attractive support officer talking into a headset, or some besuited office worker tapping into a keyboard.
The site looks great, I wish I had the frontend skills to do anything 5 times worst than this, I just don't get the sentence at the bottom:
> I HAVE DONE THIS SITE DURING ONE WEEK, INSTEAD OF LEARNING FOR MY LEAVING EXAMS AND PARTYING WITH MY FRIENDS. I HOPE IT IS GONNA BE WORTH IT!
Did you fail your exams? I had a feeling that you wanted to mention college is not that important because saying this is cool these days. Nevertheless, that's just my interpretation, kudos for the site and the projects listed.
Very impressive...If your skills are as good as you claim, I'd hire you full-time now if I had an opening; you may want to reconsider whether finishing school is a worthwhile investment of your time and money.
One small tip on your site: Get rid of the word "with" in the "I can help you with" headings. It's grammatically incorrect for the way your lists are phrased, and having "I can help you" appear three times on the page is a nice subliminal message!
Great job on your website. I would fill out your GitHub a little bit more so people can see your code. I'm jealous a little bit that I didn't get into web development as young as you did. Keep it up and continue to build awesome stuff!
Great markup - I especially enjoy that `<main>` is used for only (some wrapping `<div>`s and) an `<h1>` which conveys the authors main call: "This summer I’d like to be your Intern (June - September)"!
Great presentation and design skill, you'll def land something. Though if you want big 4 or even big 20 tech companies, then you'll need to show more real code. A good 20k loc app would be nice.
Seeing as how he is just finishing high school yet, I'm guessing he will have more code on his resume by the time he's looking for a job in 4 years. Although, with the speed of things, who knows what will be the hot skills then!
Edit: Thanks HN; I wasn't aware the code was from Codrops. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Sorry dude! Nice site. Don't go for an internship though. You command an escalation of experience that opens doors to regular full time positions. You clearly don't know what you've got.
"Steal" seems to be a slightly strong word. It looks like it's open source and just missing the license.[1]
I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt rather than jump straight to accusations.
[1] I didn't look too hard, but I came up with this link quickly: https://gist.github.com/benjaminsinger/ad5231be7748de3a9a11#... - I didn't immediately see the license on the original it was forked from, but this one has a license, so I assume there's some sort of compatibility.
His entire page is a composite of other people's open source work, the achievement isn't in writing anything new, it's just in how well it's been put together.
AFAIK This script came from Tympanus/Codrops, not VI. I've used a version of this script as well for a project. I mean, it'd be better if Marek used even a modified background instead of taking the entire example from Codrops, but I don't think it would be 'stealing' as much as reusing tutorial code.
soneca|11 years ago
So, my piece of advice: do not use this fame and fall in temptation to start capitalizaing solely on your personal brand, giving lectures, interviews, writing books on how to be hired by the hottest startups and other distractions. Keep focusing on working hard to build things. You are doing a great job on this so far. Congrats!
thesagan|11 years ago
A WaPo article I randomly dug up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2014/10/24/48765a5e-5...
MarekDlugos|11 years ago
themodelplumber|11 years ago
nickysielicki|11 years ago
* Wire clothing - there are a billion clothing brands with wire in the name, which one is yours?
* VIDBY - google search shows nothing in first 3 pages.
* Mobile App - where can I see it?
* upload.it - URL definitely does not resolve to the site pictured.
* School Site - where can I see it?
* eStavebny Dennik - See, this one's real and it's awesome! http://www.estavebnydennik.sk/
EDIT: They do exist, disregard this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459684
I've mocked websites and apps before too, but I always am sure to note that I've mocked it, not built it. If you're a front end web designer, there's no shame in that, there's a lot you can do with that. This site and eStavebny are more than enough to impress people. If the other stuff was available to look at, that'd be cool too. But don't mislead people, because if they're going to hire you, they are going to want to look deeper.
Last month my dad was telling me about the interns he was interviewing for this summer. He said he was most frustrated by the amount of overselling that these kids were doing for themselves. No, your management experience of managing your highschool robotics team is not relevant at a fortune 500 company. Related to this is the problem with college admissions. Everyone has a 4.0 with multiple APs and played varsity sports and can write a boring essay. Everyone is afraid to admit what they don't know. And I don't mean unknown unknowns, I mean known unknowns.
I'm coexisting in this problem just as much as you are, and I just want to say that I hate this. I wish we could all be honest with our skills and I wish employers would appreciate that honesty more. But we can't afford to be modest and honest, so I guess can't fault you for doing what we all do.
It's like steroids in baseball.
geographomics|11 years ago
And there is a github repo for his "upload.it" project, which appears to be a collaboration: https://github.com/mochja/odovzdaj.to
The Wire Clothing brand appears to be a work in progress as of the start of this month: https://dribbble.com/shots/2003539-WIRE-Clothing-brand-label, https://dribbble.com/shots/2004870--WIP-Wire-Shirts
And VIDEBY, which was also a collaboration, seems to be a school project only: https://www.google.com/search?q="videby"+site:sk
So his work doesn't seem to be that much oversold, though I agree it would be nice to see more detail than a screenshot.
silverbax88|11 years ago
MarekDlugos|11 years ago
lachenmayer|11 years ago
We at HackCampus http://hackcampus.io/ could offer you a 10-week internship at some amazing startups (GoCardless, SwiftKey, Kano and more) in London this summer. It's well-paid, and we'll give you free accommodation over the summer with a batch of other awesome student hackers like yourself.
http://hackcampus.io/internship/
I can give you more details over email, harry at hackcampus.io :)
neoromantique|11 years ago
Wanted to apply on your website, during registration received error 500, then CSRF verification failed. Request Aborted. And then My username is taken.
Reproduce-able too, I guess I should stop being admin and go into QA? :D
interdrift|10 years ago
http://hackcampus.io/internship/settings/ it says :
Username Enter your current password.
Just thought I should let you know, again, great opportunity hope I have the opportunity to meet with you someday :).
quadrature|11 years ago
krmmalik|11 years ago
Thank you.
jacks205|11 years ago
agentultra|11 years ago
One piece of advice: don't put C, C++, etc on your resume unless you're really comfortable with those languages and want to focus on them. Your resume highlights your design skills and projects using web technologies. Great! Focus on those!
For example, your Github has no examples of C programming skills and your resume doesn't highlight any projects where you'd likely use C. If you were interested in getting an internship where you'd primarily be programming in C you'd be better off focusing on highlighting projects that interest you which use that language. You'd stand out if you had contributions on Github or your own libraries or applications on Github written in C.
blackkettle|11 years ago
sgeisenh|11 years ago
daddykotex|11 years ago
<!-- Hello stranger... Yep! I write clean code, enjoy it! :) -->
Hahah, you sure know HN! Good luck!
johnloeber|11 years ago
Otherwise it looks great -- good going! Very impressive for a high-school student.
tdsamardzhiev|11 years ago
And yeah, I do feel kinda awkward criticizing such a beautiful portfolio for its grammar :)
rxt|11 years ago
slayed0|11 years ago
App to make uploading and downloading exam results more easier.
Just need to take out "more"
ARCarr|11 years ago
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
argklm|11 years ago
memonkey|11 years ago
I agree though. This is not exceptional or very impressive. I don't really get why this has more upvotes than the 14 year old kid who posted a relatively way cooler site that utilized a bunch of APIs, etc.
porter|11 years ago
EricSu|11 years ago
jacks205|11 years ago
Johnie|11 years ago
Also, if he doesn't go through the formal visa process and tries to do his summer internship with a visitor visa, he may be banned from the US for 10 years. Given that he's publicly publicizing coming to the US to work, it would be very easy for USCIS to block his entry into the US.
trimbo|11 years ago
I'd suggest checking this out: http://culturalvistas.org/
c0g|11 years ago
josu|11 years ago
But there are some pretty cool startups in Europe too, and given that Slovakia is part of Schengen he wouldn't have any problems with the visa if he were to work in Europe.
dcre|11 years ago
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pedant
thescrewdriver|11 years ago
Awesome attitude towards learning new skills!
thornofmight|11 years ago
jvehent|11 years ago
ethanbond|11 years ago
c0g|11 years ago
ethnt|11 years ago
sean-duffy|11 years ago
radicality|11 years ago
Raphmedia|11 years ago
Bahamut|11 years ago
CPLX|11 years ago
sheepmaniac|11 years ago
zaszrespawned|11 years ago
pistle|11 years ago
He may be a leader in this, but the group coming up definitely will be demonstrating the "Yes, and..." attitude in terms of design and features. The new kids invigorate the game, which is great.
sebg|11 years ago
One thing - pretty much everything you wrote is about you...Which is great, but it would be more compelling if removed any mention of yourself and made it all about the company who is going to hire you.
xmpirate|11 years ago
phaemon|11 years ago
saigrandhi|11 years ago
thesimon|11 years ago
<shamelessplug> I should've thought about submitting to HN too :) http://simon-schraeder.de/summer/
endymi0n|11 years ago
philip1209|11 years ago
buraksarica|11 years ago
therobot24|11 years ago
gabeio|11 years ago
cozuya|11 years ago
Not to say he doesn't have it, but creating a site like this basically requires finding a similar one and learning what classes to put into your bootstrap markup.
justathrow2k|11 years ago
yuncun|11 years ago
danielvinson|11 years ago
_wwz4|11 years ago
cpfohl|11 years ago
muglug|11 years ago
[1] https://hbr.org/2012/03/photos-of-attractive-female-jo
simonswords82|11 years ago
devinsnyder|11 years ago
davidiach|11 years ago
Nadya|11 years ago
The reasons for not attaching a photo are largely out of date.
ConAntonakos|11 years ago
meow_mix|11 years ago
sailfast|11 years ago
I was impressed at the time but alas am not in California. Did you ever find a host family in California when you posted this the first time?
logicallee|11 years ago
1/250000th.
SomeCollegeBro|11 years ago
justathrow2k|11 years ago
mholt|11 years ago
I bet you will have no problem getting to the USA to study and work.
HNdev1995|11 years ago
I am just trying to familiarise myself to the process since I will be going through it next year.
pierotofy|11 years ago
Being sarcastic here, finding a job (or studying as an undergraduate) in the U.S. as a foreigner unfortunately has very little to do with skills. Unless you have something very unique that a company decides to seek you out for!
jonathanpoulter|11 years ago
<!-- Hello stranger... Yep! I write clean code, enjoy it! :) -->
Nice.
tokenizerrr|11 years ago
diimdeep|11 years ago
lamosty|11 years ago
elchief|11 years ago
I promise to never to go back to school again.
kidsthesedays|11 years ago
vacri|11 years ago
Would you have all marketing sites also strip out photo portraits? A ton of enterprise services have landing pages with the portrait of an attractive support officer talking into a headset, or some besuited office worker tapping into a keyboard.
kocsmy|11 years ago
iak8god|11 years ago
nakovet|11 years ago
> I HAVE DONE THIS SITE DURING ONE WEEK, INSTEAD OF LEARNING FOR MY LEAVING EXAMS AND PARTYING WITH MY FRIENDS. I HOPE IT IS GONNA BE WORTH IT!
Did you fail your exams? I had a feeling that you wanted to mention college is not that important because saying this is cool these days. Nevertheless, that's just my interpretation, kudos for the site and the projects listed.
Taasden|11 years ago
> I DID THIS SITE IN A WEEK INSTEAD OF STUDYING FOR MY EXIT EXAMS OR PARTYING WITH FRIENDS. I HOPE IT WAS WORTH IT!
ChristianGeek|11 years ago
One small tip on your site: Get rid of the word "with" in the "I can help you with" headings. It's grammatically incorrect for the way your lists are phrased, and having "I can help you" appear three times on the page is a nice subliminal message!
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
agounaris|11 years ago
goffley3|11 years ago
brianzelip|11 years ago
nbrempel|11 years ago
hamandcheese|11 years ago
Brajeshwar|11 years ago
JDiculous|11 years ago
swagmeister|11 years ago
vdnkh|11 years ago
hn_|11 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9427856
ttty|11 years ago
Typo in "databeses"
Good looking resume (:
alpacaaa|11 years ago
whoisthemachine|11 years ago
tomw1808|11 years ago
spacecadet|11 years ago
infinitone|11 years ago
jakejake|11 years ago
dfinninger|11 years ago
blt|11 years ago
thomasahle|11 years ago
kenrick|11 years ago
general_failure|11 years ago
HNdev1995|11 years ago
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
karnajani|11 years ago
chrisper|11 years ago
mceoin|11 years ago
Should be databases
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
andrewmcwatters|11 years ago
http://www.hostmeinca.com/assets/js/animated-background.js
http://vaguelyexciting.com/js/site.js
Edit: Thanks HN; I wasn't aware the code was from Codrops. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Sorry dude! Nice site. Don't go for an internship though. You command an escalation of experience that opens doors to regular full time positions. You clearly don't know what you've got.
AgentConundrum|11 years ago
I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt rather than jump straight to accusations.
[1] I didn't look too hard, but I came up with this link quickly: https://gist.github.com/benjaminsinger/ad5231be7748de3a9a11#... - I didn't immediately see the license on the original it was forked from, but this one has a license, so I assume there's some sort of compatibility.
roneesh|11 years ago
kylecesmat|11 years ago
Link - http://tympanus.net/codrops/2014/09/23/animated-background-h... (Click 'View Demo')
jasonlotito|11 years ago
Original author commented, and this was referenced:
http://tympanus.net/Development/AnimatedHeaderBackgrounds/
This seems to be the original author: http://rachsmith.com/
Are you positive in your claim that Visual Idiot owns the code?
CamatHN|11 years ago
olso|11 years ago
ohitsdom|11 years ago
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
juliangregorian|11 years ago
Deebot|11 years ago
[deleted]