Wherein I help you get a good job

http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you-get-good-job.html

by malbiniak • 16 years ago

185 94 16 years ago

ximeng• 16 years ago

Advice is to contribute to Chromium, fixing 50 bugs over the course of a year or so. Might not be an easy path though, personally when I tried to compile Chromium, it took my PC 8 hours compiling before coming up with a fatal error. Been thinking about getting EC2 instances to compile it, has anyone tried that? Software license costs for Visual Studio put me off a bit.

wyclif2• 16 years ago

Been thinking about getting EC2 instances to compile it, has anyone tried that?

Sounds like a good idea to me, esp. for people working on a laptop.

Tichy• 16 years ago

You can download a compiled version :-)

Seriously, do you have to compile the whole program for every code change? I suspect that is not necessary?

jerf• 16 years ago

This is merely one of many questions you will end up learning the answer to if you pursue this program.

cosgroveb• 16 years ago

My guess is that you only have to compile the build target that your code change was part of... you can build just Chrome, or just unit tests, or whatever else is part of the package...

Also a common way to speed up build times is to build in release mode.

spudlyo• 16 years ago

No. That's why make(1) exists. You do usually have to compile everything once though.

ekidd• 16 years ago

Might not be an easy path though, personally when I tried to compile Chromium, it took my PC 8 hours compiling before coming up with a fatal error.

Welcome to software development. :-) Seriously, I probably spend at least 10% of my time dealing with broken libraries, badly documented build processes, and other depressing obstacles.

If you can get past these kinds of problems—and more importantly, if you submit fixes to spare the next person the pain—then you'll make a great developer.

technomancy2• 16 years ago

Compiling Chromium crashed my box by overheating it. Definitely not a newbie-friendly project as so much of it is implemented in C++. While Mozilla's build may be equally terrifying, at least they have the good sense to implement good portions of the UI in Javascript.

riprock• 16 years ago

Out of curiosity what are the specs of your box? If anyone else can answer, I'm also curious what kind of box you need to safely compile a huge project like Chromium.

wccrawford2• 16 years ago

Actually, that's a 103 step program, but I agree with the advice. If you want to get a job, you need experience... And the internet is full of projects that need bugfixes. That stuff looks -great- on a resume. Take that from someone who interviews hirees.

sanswork2• 16 years ago

I agree. As I mentioned on one of my CV reviews from the other week(Sorry if I didn't get to yours yet, I have my list but it takes me 10-15 minutes to do a good one and I've been short on time). When I get a CV I scan it quickly for an idea of what the person is about then throw it out or in another pile for a more in depth read.

A link to github or a blog or something where I can see some of their work "in the wild" (not just a portfolio link) always gets them in the second pile as I find code a far better indicator of a good programmer than a good CV.

rrrhys2• 16 years ago

I've never contributed to open source before - this might be just enough of a 'its easy just do it - like this' type tutorial to get me started.

jim_dot• 16 years ago

you really needed someone to tell you that it's easy to contribute to open source?

moultano• 16 years ago

Yes. Don't be a jerk. Even knowing that it isn't technically difficult, it can be socially difficult, and this is a useful guide. Knowing the social protocol of how to get started in the community lowers the mental barrier substantially.

rrrhys2• 16 years ago

No - I've got enough shit to do that I haven't really made time to give my effort to someone elses project. Maybe this is why.

dreaming• 16 years ago

yes, it is necessary to be told it is easy to contribute top open source when it is against a backdrop of being told how difficult it is to produce good code, and the difficulties around software development that are frequently reported

jamesaguilar2• 16 years ago

Stereotypically it's not very easy. Open source projects are frequently schizophrenic about the code they will accept, saying one day that it's a great idea and the next day rejecting your patch because it's not something they want to do. (This is standard for multi-agent systems, but it's still quite discouraging.) And then there are the attitudes involved. To say nothing of the overall difficulty of writing software.

It's not merely a question of needing to be told that it's easy to contribute. That's not even the right way of looking at it. The question is whether it is easy at all, and I say no. If someone told me it was easy to contribute to open source software I'd know they were either lying or delusional.

Mongoose• 16 years ago

What's the most effective way to mention open source work on resumes? I generally mix it in with other non-school- or -work-related stuff in a "projects" section, but is there a smarter way to emphasize it?

wccrawford2• 16 years ago

If you've got a lot of it, make it its own section. If you don't, but you think it's significant work experience, I'd put it under 'work experience'.

Last time I wrote a resume, I didn't have enough that I felt it was significant, so it went down as a relevant hobby, just like volunteering at the computer shop in and winning awards for computer knowledge high school.

sayrer• 16 years ago

For code, the best way is a URL to the bug tracker or commit log which shows all of your contributions. Use bit.ly if need be. A surprising number of people will list projects they've barely contributed to, using languages they barely know.

If you have 2 or 3 projects to list, an "Open Source Contributions" section is fine with me. The main thing to avoid is fancy formatting. How you divide things up into sections is not a big deal.

I like this article because I got my job this way. :)

bhoung• 16 years ago

It's great that the community is giving advice on what steps to take for getting a programming job, but I would like to add that finding a job is a short term fix. If one is only trying to work out how to get a job for the sake of getting a job, it will only be a matter of time before one is bored. But then again, you'll probably only realise this only having gone through the process. Try to find something that interests you, which may or may not be programming.

bsk• 16 years ago

"Work for me for a year w/o salary and I'll help you get a job." /jk

There are better routes for new programmers IMHO.

Start at http://rubyonrails.org/ and build a website you find useful.

Learn SharePoint or BizTalk, those are boring but in very high demand now.

Even more boring, sing up for a cheap 6 month Cobol course in India.

jordanlev2• 16 years ago

I agree that learning how to get a website up and running is an easier way to go (and hence more likely to succeed and be morale-boosting). Even if web development isn't considered as "hard-core" as working on compiled applications in C++, there are still a decent amount of jobs available.

asolove• 16 years ago

If this article is targeted at people with no experience (ie it mentions learning how to use IRC), is recommending that they fix bugs in C++ code really the right answer?

Why not start with a Python project or something more realistic?

strlen4• 16 years ago

Learn the difficult fundamentals of programming first (pointers, data structures) first. Experience with C/C++ and user-level systems programming (IPC, pthreads, BSD sockets and/or their Windows equivalents) makes you stand out amongst job applicants; writing database driven web applications in scripting languages does not. If latter is ultimately your passion, you'll have no trouble transitioning: successful web companies seek out developers who understand more than a thin segment of the full stack (see Brad Fitzpatrick's interview in Coders at Work for a good discussion of this).

I suspect there are also plenty of bugs in Chromium et al which require non-trivial scripting to find and fix (who does exclusively manual testing any more?)

mechanical_fish2• 16 years ago

Exactly. Do you want to force the interviewer to spend 45 minutes trying to divine, unreliably, if you know what a pointer is, and that you won't go into the fetal position when you see your first segfault? Or do you just want to email some links to the online discussion of your patches in advance and spend the interview talking about something else?

jrockway6• 16 years ago

I disagree. Work on what you're interested in. If you're an expert on data structures but can't write programs, you're useless. If you can write programs but don't know data structures, you can pick up a textbook and solve that problem in a week.

Now, in my current position, I wouldn't hire someone that didn't have a solid understanding of data structures already (unless they were an intern)... but at other places I've worked, I would hire you in a second. The thing that will make you stand out in an interview is a proven track record of writing software. Other stuff can be fixed later.

(A lot of people that work as "software engineers" cannot write or engineer software. They kind of open up the Eclipse project, click shit, write status reports, and call it a day. This is what I want to filter out in an interview.)

aboodman• 16 years ago

I specifically chose Chromium (or another browser) because it is one of the few pieces of open source software that normal people would have direct experience using.

Seeing your fixes shipped to you and your friends' browsers is an awesome motivational tool.

It's true that it's harder, but it seemed like a reasonable trade-off.

My main concern with picking a browser wasn't the difficulty it was the expense of having a good machine to work with. Sadly this applies to all browsers that I'm aware of. Building Mozilla is terrible. WebKit is probably the best; it just contains less code (you only build the rendering engine when you work on WebKit, not the browser).

swombat2• 16 years ago

Granted, but the learning curve to pick up all that's required to becoming an active committer to the Chrome codebase (command line, VCS, UI programming, OOP, Pointers, C++, and so on) is more like a vertical cliff than a curve.

Out of 1000 non-CS people who try to do this I'd be surprised if even 10 make it through to compiling the Chrome source, and I'll be stunned if even 1 makes it through to the end of your "5-step plan".

It's a noble aim, and the idea in general is right (learn to program and contribute to open-source software) (though I can't quite agree with considering their education a "sunk cost" - you need to build on what you have or you'll always be disadvantaged), but there are better, easier ways to achieve that objective than going straight from "I've never seen water in my life" to jumping into a pool infested with shark, mutant piranhas and man-eating giant squids.

VladRussian• 16 years ago

>Building Mozilla is terrible.

you should have tried building it in 1999. Last time i did it - in 2007 - it was a blast compare to 1999.

guelo2• 16 years ago

C++ isn't that hard, I got a pretty good hang of it after a couple months on my first project out of college. Why is a Python project "more realistic"? the learning curve is probably similar.

jordanlev2• 16 years ago

Memory management.

I think this makes it about twice as difficult to get up and running in c++. Not saying it's better or worse or going to make you a better programmer or not, but I don't think anyone could argue that it's easier to learn C++ than python/ruby/php/etc.

Also see: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000006.html

tbrownaw2• 16 years ago

More accessible high-level libraries (C++ probably does have more total, but they'd be harder to find and get working) and no compiler flags / link options to get wrong. You don't have to specify your types, which makes small programs easier to write (but makes large programs more painful to get right).

Tycho2• 16 years ago

My friend is quite impressive at the guitar despite never having lessons. He says the day he went from beginner/average to pretty damn good was when he decided to learn a Hendrix part way beyond his then skill level.

jrockway6• 16 years ago

This would be a great story if the ending was, "read a music theory textbook and proceeded to mint his first Platinum album" :)

KevinMS4• 16 years ago

But there are a few fields that are hiring like crazy. One of them is mine: software engineering. Major tech firms cannot hire fast enough. It's so competitive that you do not need to have a degree (I don't).

Was this written in the late 90's?

I follow job listing sites almost daily, and I'm just not seeing this. I'm also not seeing it in the volume of headhunters contacting me.

And thirdly, what job listings I do see, they have absurd ideas of what qualifications they require. Yesterday I saw a job listing for perl scripter for system automation tasks requiring a BSCS, MS preferred, and a little while ago I saw a sysadmin job requiring a BSCS.

I'm not in the middle of nowhere, I'm in the Boston/128 area.

So do I have the worst job hunting skills ever or is this guy living in a bubble?

SandB0x• 16 years ago

In my experience, mainstream jobsites are awful for software jobs. Jobseekers are sitting there firing off CV's left right and centre, and the recruiters put things like "MUST have a BSc or MSc in Computer Science" to try and stem the tide.

Good companies don't care if you have a CS degree as long as you can code and think. That said, someone may have embellished the job requirements and if you think you'd be a good fit for a job it may be worth applying anyway.

I'm not sure what the situation is if you have no degree at all, or a degree with no scientific or technical element, but it helps to have evidence of your skills, and whatever your situation it really helps to know people who have a good impression of you and your abilities.

For better jobs boards, look at:

Stack Overflow Careers http://careers.stackoverflow.com/Jobs?searchTerm=&search...

HN Who's Hiring threads. Eg http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659409

Also, check local user groups for whatever languages/technologies you're interested in.

KevinMS4• 16 years ago

I'm talking about sites like craigslist and jobs.perl.com, and I'm aware recruiters put in all kinds of filters like a CS degree but I'm mindfull of that and I notice that the same problem exists without recruiters involved.

Stackoverflow careers? Seriously? "34 jobs found near boston". How many candidates are looking at these listings? Thousands?

cletus• 16 years ago

While you can get a job (and a good job at that) without a CS degree it is my opinion that you are putting yourself at a significant disadvantage by not having one.

One aspect is the theoretical foundation. You can of course get this by just reading yourself and a transcript doesn't actually prove you know anything but without a CS foundation, the onus is now on you know to prove somehow you're simply a "monkey see, monkey do" cut-and-paste coder.

The other important part is practical. Companies get a lot of CVs. For programming jobs, the most common filter is "has a degree". If you have one, you go in one pile, if you don't, you go in the other (which is often filed in the big circular filing cabinet). What's more, hiring managers may have their hands tied on this one: it could be HR policy or the hiring manager may not even see your CV because HR has already filtered it out (this happens a lot).

After I started working I went back and studied part time to get a degree. I'm glad I did, even if it's major use is to have one less barrier to being hired.

estel• 16 years ago

Whilst the average quality on those boards is clearly much higher, the number of jobs being posted is about two orders of magnitude lower than mainstream jobsites; and until they gain more traction, they'll never be the first place I check for any vacancies.

greyhat2• 16 years ago

I'm about to graduate BSCS from an engineering school, and every networking job I've seen wants experience + CCNA/CCNP, and the system administration jobs want BSCS + experience. I have 5+ years of part time IT experience and a summer of full time basically admin level experience and yet I can't even get interviews. Pretty depressing. =|

KevinMS4• 16 years ago

Its just crazy they want a BSCS for sysadmin. That's like requiring a truck driver to have a degree in thermodynamics.

angelbob• 16 years ago

Perhaps he's living in the Silicon Valley bubble. His experience looks a lot like mine.

sanswork2• 16 years ago

I see two problems with this. One you're expecting them to come to you just because you are there or looking in the worst spots for good jobs(public job sites).

Get out and contact the headhunters yourself and work with them and network with all the people you do know and hit them up for positions. They might not have anything at their work but its possible they or one of their colleagues has or knows someone who does have a position open.

Secondly you are taking the BSCS or MS lines in job ads at face value. When they say "Requires a BSCS" what they mean is "Requires a BSCS or experience".

ary• 16 years ago

Your difficulty and this gentleman's relative lack of difficulty finding a job probably has a lot to do with location. Second runner up is probably credibility. Let me explain.

My experience is in line with the author's. Finding a job has always been relatively easy (beginning at a certain point, which I will elaborate on) and I do not have a degree of any kind. It's my opinion that three factors are primarily responsible for my state of affairs.

1. I started working at a local ISP when I was 15 years old. This was around the time that 28.8kbps modems were all the rage. While I was very green I had unbounded enthusiasm and desire to learn whatever I could about technology. The ISP got a super cheap tech support person and I got paid to learn. After a year I got a chance to do UNIX sysadmin work, and my level of experience began to snowball.

The (fairly obvious) takeaway here is that I built experience. Businesses don't want to train you if they can help it. Not able to find a learn-on-the-job opportunity? Take the author's advice and contribute to an interesting open source project.

2. Befriending an employee of one of the largest ISPs in the United States ended up landing me a development position on a pretty large contract. I worked damn hard, and ended up contributing in a fairly visible way. Because the job was for a company in the Fortune 50 I've since been able to point to it as social proof that I at least have a vague idea of what I'm doing. Employers love this. This is when job hunting became dramatically easier.

You may think the takeaway here is to be lucky, but I disagree. The takeaway is to get to know people that you can develop mutually beneficial relationships with. To this day I still get contract work and referrals from people I worked with on that one job.

3. Location. Companies will sometimes relocate you, but I've never seen one that will do it without there being a very compelling reason to have you on staff (ie, experience and a proven track record). You have to go where the jobs are. Sometimes you have to suck it up, move away from your family and friends, become a nobody, and start pulling in a paycheck. Once you do you can start planning (and saving) for the luxury of living and working in a desirable place.

The takeaway here? Get away from the crowd. In my experience there are at least two good markets for developers, Denver/Boulder CO (Denver being easier than Boulder), and Kansas City MO/KS. I'm not a big fan of Kansas or Missouri (sorry natives, you're all great people), but Colorado is a beautiful place with lots to do outside your cube/apartment. The job markets in both those places are reasonable and you can be relatively well paid even with limited experience. How do they compare with SF/NYC? Not even close, but it's way easier to stand out from the crowd when there is no crowd. Being in the middle of nowhere can sometimes be a benefit.

All that said, good luck.

jkin• 16 years ago

This is an interesting path to get a good software job. I agree that when it comes to software jobs, a good resume with a lot of techno buzz words does not mean anything. An interview that gives coding puzzle can easily tell a person if he's capable or not. But a non-tech hiring manager will not be able to carry one out, a few references of open source projects, bug fixes definitely boost up your scores quite a bit. I've hired some good people and some bad before, at the end of day, your project success is not based on how many PhDs there are on the team, but how many coders that can deliver.

Tycho2• 16 years ago

This article is like a breath of fresh air. One of the few things you read about the industry that doesn't make you feel vastly underqualified. I'll definitely take aboodman up on his offer (coincidentally I logged onto freenode for the first time in my life a few hours before reading this...), although I expect he's inundated with responses right now so I'll leave it a few days.

RockyMcNuts3• 16 years ago

Can't help wondering if CodingHorror.com posted this because they were running out of material.

RockyMcNuts3• 16 years ago

learned my lesson... any attempt at humor loses karma lol

RockyMcNuts3• 16 years ago

let me give the humor police one more to downvote lol

tjmc4• 16 years ago

An easier alternative - I'm really surprised that out of work graduates from the US aren't getting Australian working holiday visas and flooding down here. Due to a resources boom (thanks China) unemployment is only 5% here. There are skills shortages in most technical areas and particularly mining. The Reserve Bank of Australia just raised interest rates again because it was worried about the economy overheating.

The working visa has some restrictions - you must be between 18 and 30. It's only valid for 12 months and you can only work for a maximum of 6 months for any one employer. The last provision is a bit tough, but there are still plenty of 6 month contracts around.

Why do Americans have such a strong reluctance to travel abroad for work? I've never understood it. It's a great opportunity to get some work experience, live a little and, particularly for the mid-west and east coasters, skip winter!

pyre• 16 years ago

Are you sure that US citizens can get working holiday visas in Australia? I was under the impression that most common-wealth countries had such agreements (and for some odd reason Japan is included in there), but that was it. For example, a US citizen can't get a working holiday visa in Canada, but a Japanese, Australian, or UK citizen can.

tjmc4• 16 years ago

Yep. Details from the Dept of Immigration: http://www.immi.gov.au/visitors/working-holiday/462/usa/

You're right that it was previously just Commonwealth countries, but I think US citizens were included as part of the US-Australia free trade agreement signed a few years back.

Also, I can't see any tertiary education requirement on the site (just secondary), but apparently you need to show you have access to $5000 on arrival.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

Yep, the Australian govt. will literally grab you by the arm and drag you over there if you show an interest.

The skills shortage is, apparently, acute.

When I finished my engineering degree and they had a jobs fair the Australian stand was huge - and the "package" of benefits (i.e. crazy tax breaks, free loan car etc.) was mad.

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

I have no reluctance to travel abroad for work at all. There's tons of places elsewhere in the world I'd love to work. But when the jobs you want are in America (or at least in greater density or number than elsewhere) why would you leave America?

tjmc4• 16 years ago

I'm not sure why you were voted down as I don't see anything wrong with your point. My brother lives in Mountain View, works in biotech and has long said that the scene in Australia just hasn't got the critical mass it has there.

But the number of available jobs is the issue here and I wasn't so much referring to established professionals as those who are just starting out and having a very tough time finding their first gig in the current US economy.

In Australia and NZ, the option to look abroad for work is on pretty much every graduate's list that I've met and I guess it's understandable due to our population sizes. I got my first development job in the UK and it was that critical "foot in the door" that I needed to get work when I came back home.

loewenskind2• 16 years ago

>Why do Americans have such a strong reluctance to travel abroad for work?

To fully understand this you'd probably have to live in the US. We grow up constantly hearing things like "in America at least we know we're free" and many of us can't help but think "why do they keep repeating this? Is everyone else not?". We're constantly indoctrinated about being the best in the world, so no matter how bad things are here, they must be worse everywhere else right?

We have an enormous amount of people in the US who've never been outside of it and have a completely wrong picture of the rest of the world. It was shocking for me, for example, when I came over to Europe and saw places like Sweden and France. I saw what I knew as socialism, but it seemed to be working! And the more I looked the more it appeared to actually work better for the average person. It was so demonized back home, who could have imagined that it's actually just a trade off like everything else. Some previously good friends of mine now literally think I'm a communist (sadly I'm not even exaggerating).

njn• 16 years ago

I'm from the United States, and I never appreciated this country until I spent a year in Denmark! Socialism seems to be working for the most part, but I don't like the conformist attitude and culture it encourages.

smiler2• 16 years ago

I think you will find the majority of the western world have a strong reluctance to travel abroad for work.

- Working abroad means leaving behind friends, family etc. To many people, this is a big deal

- A large majority of the working population have children. Moving abroad is not a simple process when you have a family and it then also means many people's support network (fellow parents, grandparents) disappears

Also I must say, there is a dearth of interesting companies to work for in software / technology outside of the USA (I'm sure someone will now provide me with a nice list and prove me wrong :). I'm in the UK and can only think of a handful of companies I would love to have a job at.

[I'm hoping to do something about this with all the job talk at HN recently and make discovering cool companies to work for easier]

rdouble• 16 years ago

There are plenty of reasons why Americans don't like to travel abroad for work. I'm sure other posts will cover them.

However, I don't think many people know about this particular working visa. My sister lives in Australia and I hadn't heard of it until your post. I just looked it up and it looks like it started in 2007. Too bad I no longer fit the age requirements. I'll pass the info along to my younger brother, though. Good tip.

wyclif2• 16 years ago

you must be between 18 and 30

Why the restrictive cutoff at age 30?

elechi• 16 years ago

I believe it's because younger people are cheaper to support (financially, physically) as a society than older people. More flexible, too.

gaustin• 16 years ago

Do you have any idea how difficult it would be if you found a great employer while on the working visa, and wanted to make the move permanent?

tjmc4• 16 years ago

Actually I think you'd have a pretty good chance of getting sponsored for a normal work visa in that situation. Unrestricted work visas here are awarded on a points system. Most IT positions are awarded maximum points and you get more for being under 30, healthy and speaking English.

Goladus• 16 years ago

Why do Americans have such a strong reluctance to travel abroad for work? I've never understood it.

Do Americans have a strong reluctance to travel abroad for work? I haven't noticed one way or the other. When I graduated in 2001, my 'reluctance' was based on broke-ness. The difficulty affording even a $75 fee (for a background check to work for the local school district) meant that the thought of leaving all my connections and going several thousand dollars into debt for overseas relocation didn't even cross my mind.

smh• 16 years ago

A good complement to this would be to work through the exercises in K&R.

celticjames• 16 years ago

Great advice, but two caveats:

1. Employers are often focused on hiring very specific skills sets. Having fixed a C++ bug in Chromium should impress them, but if they need a Django expert they still see you as a novice. It can be hard to present yourself as a well-rounded candidate if all your experience is with one project.

2. In a couple of interviews I've had, I've noticed a distinct bias towards valuing paid work more than open source contributions. It's often hard to get interviewers to understand that something I've done for free is on the same scale (or greater) than things I've been paid for.

usedtolurk• 16 years ago

Part of me loves this kind of inspiring advice ("you too can grow up to be president"). And it certainly is true for some people.

But the truth is that most people who try this will fail. Very few people have the right combination of aptitude and attitude to do this (especially considering that the intended audience is people without an IT background).

[edit] Perhaps the message to take away is that there is a low barrier to entry in our field, so it's worth giving it a shot.

Wherein I help you get a good job

Related Stories