Rustdoc résumé

https://yozhgoor.github.io/yohan_boogaert_1995/

by 1f60c • 5 years ago

122 128 5 years ago

yozhgoor.github.io

Opinion: LaTeX resumes/CVs don't make any sense.

If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX. You might use it for a paper or a book where you have a lot of content or multiple issues that you want to look consistent. But a resume is a single, small document with multiple different sections that have different formatting requirements.

In your job, you probably share information in markdown or rst. If you're looking to signal - and let's be honest, with LaTeX you are - why not use those?

Bonus: ATS systems and recruiters won't bork your input.

tyingq• 5 years ago

Assuming the LaTeX resume would be shared with a recruiter as a pdf, is there really any difference? I could render the markdown with the Computer Modern font and many people would assume LaTeX.

JustFinishedBSG2• 5 years ago

I could render the markdown with the Computer Modern font

You really shouldn't though. Computer Modern is a pretty ugly font.

At least use something like New Computer Modern if you really need a Scoth Roman font with maths.

Sharlin3• 5 years ago

As an aside, in 2021 Computer Modern looks really dated, especially for content that’s predominantly text rather than math. There are much better, more Unicode-friendly, and more typographically complete LaTeX fonts available.

unquietcode• 5 years ago

Counter-opinion: your resume will likely be viewed as a PDF or printed on a piece of paper and taken into an interview session, so all that really matters it how it looks on a standard size page for the region in which you're applying.

xyzzy_plugh• 5 years ago

I find most resumes are slurped into a database, losing all formatting, then rendered real shitty on greenhouse or something. I send a PDF and plaintext, but I prefer just sending plaintext usually.

thrwyoilarticle7• 5 years ago

That's if it gets viewed at all. I have sat with an interviewer correcting all the information that their ATS misread. Apple's ATS did not properly ingest my PDF LaTeX CV.

paulgb3• 5 years ago

LaTeX has good typography. I'd rather look at a LaTeX resume with a decent template than an MS Word one. Plus, with LaTeX you can use version control. Markdown doesn't give you the level of control most people want in their resume layout.

Edit: also, I agree that Computer Modern can come off as signaling (although, in quant finance, I found it to be a useful and positive signal). But using other fonts it doesn't have the same connotations and just looks a bit more polished.

JustFinishedBSG2• 5 years ago

If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX.

I would, and do, use TeX. Hell I'd use LaTeX for everything if I could.

bradrn7• 5 years ago

Completely agreed. Except for the very very few cases where Word is better (e.g. printing out lots of pictures), I make a point of using LaTeX whenever possible. It’s just so much less painful than anything else.

thrwyoilarticle7• 5 years ago

You're in the minority. I haven't seen any LaTeX readmes on github.

bobbylarrybobby2• 5 years ago

Does anybody really care what you use to generate your resume? LaTeX produces nice looking PDF output, is semantic (\cvitem{...}) and is modularized (if you're using OpenCV, you can change the layout with one line).

Communitivity3• 5 years ago

I've been meaning to use OpenCV, as I need to sharpen up my resume again (every 3 years). Do you have any resources you would recommend?

I've used OverLeaf [1] and a tweaked Shawn Pan's 'Resume for a Software Engineer' template [2] in the past.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com/

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/resume-template-for-...

OJFord• 5 years ago

There's a LaTeX curriculum vitae template called 'OpenCV'? That's brilliant.

I use LaTeX for mine, not because of some misguided sense of street cred, but just because I want it version controlled. I'm sure there are some nice pandoc templates for styling markdown CVs, but AwesomeCV for LaTeX CVs was what I came across, and has worked fine (roughly, it's abandonware that I've tweaked/fixed a bit but nobody's PRs get merged) since. My CV doesn't say 'proudly generated with heart emojis in LaTeX', or anything like that, it's just the tool I happened to use.

bobbylarrybobby2• 5 years ago

Edit: whoops, it's moderncv, not openvc.

pow_pp_-1_v• 5 years ago

I am building a LaTex resume. Why? Because I hate working on my resume and doing it with markup and other stuff makes it a bit more... bearable?

Yeah, I know, I am weird.

actually_a_dog2• 5 years ago

You can skip doing all that formatting work yourself by using a good template. If you choose a 1-column layout, ATS probably won't bork it any more than any other PDF, too.

Here are a bunch of templates that range from decent-looking to beautiful: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv

Communitivity3• 5 years ago

I agree on your main point, in a weaker wording: 'LaTeX resumes/CVs rarely make sense', but not for the reason you gave, and I disagree with not using LaTeX in general for technical information.

The reason I think LaTeX resumes/CVs rarely make sense is that there are a number of HR departments that require them in MS Word format (often this is a SharePoint house and yes, I think that bizarre, but that is what I've found). LaTeX can be converted to Word doc, but in my experience always requires tweaking.

For sharing technical work, I think it depends on your audience.

A connected team with a decent wiki or document generation pipline authoring informal technical how-tos or status intended for the team only? Then some flavor of markdown (I prefer Creole) can make perfect sense.

Authoring anything for team external use should use a well defined community standard (rustdoc, rst, etc.) if what's being documented is specific to that community (Rust code, Python code, etc.).

Authoring anything of a more technical nature (papers, how-tos to be delivered to a client, CONOPS) should be authored in a pipeline that starts with a text based format, so that you can put it under good version control (opinionated, but SharePoint/Word do not count for that for me). I prefer LaTeX for that format. Some prefer Docbook, some DITA, and I've even seen a TOML version. This gets you version control, document section re-use, and fine-grained control over document layout.

Note I said should.

Some potential barriers to that are:

* Skillsets - the rest of the team does not know Docbook, DITA, or LaTeX and may be resistant to learn. This will make it a hard sell to management.

* Time - The project does not have the budget or scope to change how documentation is being done, according to management. In reality, this pipeline will save time in editing, and improve quality delivered to the client or end customer.

* NIH/NIMBY - Not Invented Here and it's more obstinate brother, Not In My Backyard. If your shop has always done it a certain way, then the team may be resistant to changing. Especially if the way it has been done is reflective of a Windows world (MS Word, MS PowerPoint). If management is part of this problem, move. Only partially kidding, but a good document pipeline will be a hard sell.

What do you do if you cannot sell a good document pipeline?

You could version control your MS Word documents in Git through conversion[1], but this means you might lose some of the little tweaks your manager did to improve quality/put their stamp on the doc.

Another option is that MS Word has track changes, and you may be stuck with a combination of track changes and SharePoint/Confluence versioning.

Another option, which I've never tried, is to unzip the MS .docx file into a folder (each .docx file is a zip of a bunch of files, most them text), git version control that folder, and re-zip it up when needed. Not sure how well git diffs will work in this situation though. My guess it probably not well, but maybe better than nothing.

[1] https://blog.front-matter.io/mfenner/using-microsoft-word-wi...

wycy• 5 years ago

Having my resume in LaTeX offers a nice perk I haven't seen mentioned in the replies yet: under each section you can put a ton of different bullet points all commented out, and simply uncomment the most relevant ones for each job you're applying to.

c618b9b695c4• 5 years ago

I do the same. It is nice because I not only add a bullet point, but I can also keep in-line comments to remind me what the project was years down the road.

  %\item{Built internal dashboard for foo}
  % this was that awful project for <person> where they changed the requirements at the last second and yada yada...

globular-toast• 5 years ago

If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX.

If it was for print then yes, I would. But a CV isn't technical information so I'm not sure what your point is here.

Have you considered that LaTeX might be the only typesetting tool I know? Why would I learn another piece of software just to typeset my CV?

thrwyoilarticle7• 5 years ago

Well I think a CV is technical information and I do know more than one typesetting tool.

smokey_circles3• 5 years ago

Tangential question:

I've used both Manjaro and Arch and Manjaro is far away my favorite distribution, because (to me at least) it's Arch for the lazy.

I ran Arch for years before Manjaro and so maybe that's the reason, but I don't believe Manjaro abstracts you away from nuts and bolts layer as much as Ubuntu does?

INB4 the ubuntu comment: I know, I know. You can still do a lot of fiddling under the hood, it's just not in a manner i'd describe as "the linux way". There are a lot of helper layers that break if you try to subvert them, but i will admit that update-alternatives is the only example coming to mind now

SkyMarshal3• 5 years ago

I recently spent some time evaluating a bunch of different systems for migrating away from Ubuntu, including several Arch-based ones.

I was the most impressed with Manjaro, it seems very well polished. From Gnome 40 on Wayland, to the the default ZFS shell with custom Powerline prompt, to the GUI desktop layout switcher which even includes the tiling PoP Shell as an option.

The Manjaro team has done an excellent job at assembling a configuration that is simultaneously power-user-focused but also user-friendly.

smokey_circles3• 5 years ago

Absolutely!

I just wish there'd be some more love on architect.

But maybe I need to learn more about the default installer, I couldn't get it to run on LVM and/or LUKS

JanMa• 5 years ago

I definitely agree with you. Manjaro is a great distro and I have used for multiple years. I especially liked that they offer such a broad range of supported desktop environments, each with their own downloadable ISO image.

If you are looking for something that's closer to pure Arch under the hood, your should give Endeavour OS [0] a try. It's basically vanilla Arch with a nicely configured XFCE desktop and a graphical installer.

[0] https://endeavouros.com/

SkyMarshal3• 5 years ago

to the the default ZFS shell

Correction: ZSH shell.

zozbot234• 5 years ago

Debian is Arch for the lazy. It's also Arch for the professional who understands the pitfalls of the "rolling" release model.

vlovich123• 5 years ago

That's a bold claim considering Homebrew has been wildly successful on Mac & been doing the whole rolling release thing the entire time. Everything in the world is tradeoffs so I can also say "Arch is for the professional who understands the pitfalls of random OS distro updates/patches to upstream packages that don't get updated for years".

smokey_circles3• 5 years ago

I'm likely too young to fully appreciate that sentiment, but fair enough!

arsome• 5 years ago

Yeah, I remember Arch breaking systems completely back when they moved the entire /bin and /lib, setting python3 as the default python, etc. Took hours of fucking around to fix.

I'm a tinkerer typically, but it seemed like they were going out of their way to break things and generate maintenance work for me, I've never had that issue with any other distro and I will never run Arch again because of it.

dcminter9• 5 years ago

[Ubuntu] You can still do a lot of fiddling under the hood, it's just not in a manner i'd describe as "the linux way".

I use and like Ubuntu, but I have to agree with this. Even before I finished reading this paragraph I was thinking of update-alternatives. Networking config springs to mind as well for me.

dmos62• 5 years ago

If you want the Linux-way, nuts-and-bolts Slackware is where it's at. Slackware and Void Linux were my favorite distros. These days I'm just using Ubuntu for plug-and-play convenience.

kosolam2• 5 years ago

Nice! Rust as first language. You must be something special. I suggest employers to check this guy out.

Communitivity3• 5 years ago

Going to drop a link to Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement diagram here [1].

I've upvoted you to give you the benefit of the doubt, because your comment could be taken as either positive, or negative. Based on the other comments in your profile I think you genuinely intended a positive meaning for your complement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...

kosolam2• 5 years ago

Hey! Thanks! Indeed the comment is meant to be a compliment to this guy. I truly believe that if he managed the learning curve of Rust in addition with that being his first programming language, it means that he is quite strong and has potential to bring value to his future employer.

fecak21• 5 years ago

Professional resume writer here. Quick review.

We don't use first person voice on resumes. We use 'implied first person' (no 'I'). So "Former emergency response driver..."

Mentioning a Twitter handle is only useful if your Twitter has things you'd want people to see.

The professional experience section (Modules here) should be in reverse chronological order - so most recent first. It would be useful to say something that you did while working for RustMinded and maybe tell the reader who the company is. So it might look like:

Software Developer, Rustminded $DATE_- present

RustMinded is a Belgian startup dedicated to the promotion of the Rust language.

As others have said, I don't really get the fascination with LaTeX. I get a lot of incoming resumes from my tech clients that are written in LaTeX. It feels more like "I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you" than "it's the best tool for the job".

The project sections are mostly OK other than some language issues.

foldr4• 5 years ago

Grammar nitpick: first person is not a voice.

bradrn7• 5 years ago

Furthermore, I’d describe GP’s comment as encouraging ‘pro-drop’ rather than any ‘voice’. (Though I suspect the technical details of syntactic terminology are somewhat irrelevant for résumé-writing.)

bennylope• 5 years ago

As others have said, I don't really get the fascination with LaTeX.

I have gone down this path with other types of documents (reports, proposals) not because I love LaTeX but because I hate composing and editing in Word, etc. Especially for long lived or repeated documents. Some of those tech clients might just prefer working with plain text for editing, source control, and/or version branching.

kemiller2002• 5 years ago

You've never really "lived" until you realize that your document with the different sections, etc. that you've painstakingly setup is broken because of a copy paste issue when adding a new section. LaTex maybe a pain, but at least the output is consistent. There is no magic where the formatting bleeds over due to something you can't see on screen.

cookieswumchorr• 5 years ago

I never had the time/brains to get past the learn curve with LaTeX. Recently I started using a pipeline of markdown to html with Pandoc and then to pdf with Dompdf for project documentation.

Turns out you get neatly formatted printable docs with not so much effort, and the raw markdown stays with the code where it can be used and updated by fellow devs

dhosek• 5 years ago

I used to do my resume in a custom TeX format.¹ It looked gorgeous. But because so much of tech world hiring is mediated by recruiters and automated resume ingestion systems, having a straightforward document in Word ended up serving me much better.

1. An ancient resume macro (and an ancient resume) that I made while a freshman in college is on CTAN. What I used in my early career was not that, although I doubt I have any relic of that later file anymore.

dvdkon• 5 years ago

I don't think a novelty résumé needs to be so conventional, people will mostly, in my opinion, either dislike it for not following layout/organisation conventions or look past all that altogether.

fecak21• 5 years ago

For someone like this with little experience, being unconventional is probably OK because they aren't being judged by the same criteria as an experienced hire. That said, you can be unconventional and still provide the reader with the basic facts they'd want to know (like 'what are your accomplishments?' or 'did you attend school?').

dcminter9• 5 years ago

We don't use first person voice on resumes. We use 'implied first person' (no 'I').

Who is "we" here? I've always had good results with a first person CV - so far in the US, the UK, and the EU. Maybe I just get away with it by luck or circumstance, but it's clearly not a set-in-stone requirement.

It feels more like "I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you" than "it's the best tool for the job".

Anecdotally a friend who at that time worked at Sun Microsystems told me that his team prioritised CVs created with LaTeX over all others.

After all, if the purpose of a CV is not to "try and impress you" then what is it?

fecak21• 5 years ago

Not using "I" on a resume is pretty much the first rule of resume writing. If you were to search for rules of resume writing, I expect that would probably appear on every article. If you've had good results with a first person CV, that's probably because your experience is strong enough that the reader forgives you for the error.

Of course you 'can' write a resume in first person. It's just not the voice that the reader expects. Similar to third person.

A resume is certainly meant to try and impress the reader, but typically we're trying to impress the reader with professional accomplishments. I'm much more impressed by someone's professional accomplishments than their choice to use LaTeX.

baby2• 5 years ago

We don't use first person voice on resumes. We use 'implied first person' (no 'I'). So "Former emergency response driver..."

Sorry but no, that’s bad advice.

fecak21• 5 years ago

I've written thousands of resumes, and all written using implied first person. My results are pretty consistent with hundreds of clients getting jobs at many of the most selective employers in the world.

I appreciate your response, but implied first person is the industry standard, and has been for as long as I've been in business.

xondono• 5 years ago

As others have said, I don't really get the fascination with LaTeX

LaTex is really powerful when you get to a certain point, but unless you’ve tinkered with it until you reach that point, it’s a PITA.

To me the number 1 advantage is that I can easily keep updated various versions of the CV, because by working at startups I’ve always have to wear a lot of hats. I keep a more ‘hardware oriented’ CV, another more ‘software oriented’ CV, and I added a more “management” version that showcases better team leadership instead on focusing on the tech stack.

It’s also very handy to keep everything as text documents when you are asked to submit to different webforms, and being able to adjust things like quality vs pdf size is important when submitting your CV in some places

cies• 5 years ago

I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you

I built my LaTeX resume trying to impress a potential employer yeeears ago. So far it's really easy to keep up to date and to temporarily remove parts (comment them out). I think the end result looks a bit more professionally type-set than a Word/GDocs creation.

UnpossibleJim2• 5 years ago

Out of sheer curiosity (and this has nothing to do with the conversation at large), how does one become a "professional resume writer"? Is that a recruiter who helps write resumes, or are you solely focused on resume writing? Is it a side gig, or do you do enough resume writing to make it a full time job?

I apologize if these are well known answers but I stick with a fairly technical crowd and, well word of mouth usually gets us passed around to be brutally honest. I hate to admit it, but a half way legible resume and it's usually just references after a point =/

fecak21• 5 years ago

I was a recruiter for 20 years, and I've always been a strong writer. As a recruiter I read tens (perhaps hundreds?) of thousands of resumes, and I knew the audience. I had always done some resume editing or helping my candidates with their resumes, and I decided I wanted to see if I could support myself as a writer instead of a recruiter.

I do quite well as a writer. My hourly rate is $100/hr, I also offer flat rate services, and for the past few years I've consistently had a roster of anywhere from 30-40 clients at any given time.

My clientele is about 50% tech, as that's my specialty and I was a tech recruiter for my entire recruiting career. Word of mouth does sometimes get you by if you have a good network. There are quite a few reasons people hire a resume writer. Some just simply struggle to write. Some struggle to understand what the reader wants to know. Some aren't comfortable taking credit for their accomplishments, so a writer makes it feel less 'braggy'.

I hope I answered your questions.

_moof• 5 years ago

Ugh, LaTeX resumes. They're a dime a dozen (I've interviewed hundreds of engineers) and they utterly fail to make people stand out, which is the whole point of a resume. When I get a resume that was done in LaTeX from someone who isn't a mathematician, it makes a bad impression. I'm not saying that's right, or fair, but it's true. It comes off as trying to look smart without the substance to back it up, and because so many people do it, it also comes off as really unoriginal, and makes the resume forgettable.

So please everyone, stop with the performative LaTeX. If you had any idea how many people do this, you'd be embarrassed.

(And to add a dash of humility to this comment, I'll confess that I used to write my resume in LaTeX. After seeing how many other people do too, I stopped.)

anchpop• 5 years ago

I don’t have a math background but I learned LaTeX out of necessity. If I needed a resume I might use it just because it seems easier than messing with Word. It’s not like LaTeX is that hard to use so I don’t see why you see it as performative.

sampo• 5 years ago

It feels more like "I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you"

It's not meant to impress you, a resume writer. It's meant to impress other techies.

fecak21• 5 years ago

Correct. The "you" here isn't actually "me" (the writer), but rather the decision maker (the recruiter or hiring manager).

follownotrend• 5 years ago

To OP - I think the resume is a clever format, and riding a language's popularity is a great way of putting yourself out there, especially as a junior.

To others, the "Traits" section -- how much impact does this really matter to the hiring managers? You're hired for what you know, but you're fired for who you are. Is it worth it to expand on these "traits", or is it a fluff area that can be replaced with something more meaningful?

onei• 5 years ago

For hiring software devs, I don't care about soft skills on a CV. If I'm concerned, I'll pull that thread in an interview. I'd much rather see those traits demonstrated rather than claim you have them and fall short of my expectations.

Recently, I've also seen people put progress bars for soft skills on a CV, as if they're close to mastering the skill or at least levelling up. It normally takes up a lot of space and is virtually meaningless.

exdsq2• 5 years ago

Was once hiring for a IT Support role and someone applied with a star-based system for their skills. I still to this day do not know what 4.5 Stars in "Cables" could ever possibly mean.

minxomat• 5 years ago

For soft skills, saying "can do X" isn't useful. The only written example that I'd even consider is you demonstrating X as part of a written sample (STAR answer), or BQ during an interview.

actually_a_dog2• 5 years ago

My impression: this is cute, but confusing. I don't like having to mentally translate things like "modules" and "constants" into headings that would appear in a resume.

paulgb3• 5 years ago

As usual with quirky resumes, I think a lot of people are missing the point. Nobody is suggesting that we all start using rustdoc for our resumes.

It's a fun, different way of presenting a resume. The fact that it made it to the front page of HN means it worked at what it was intended to do: be seen by a bunch of prospective employers and stand out.

PragmaticPulp• 5 years ago

Nobody is suggesting that we all start using rustdoc for our resumes.

Maybe nobody is suggesting it, but these clever resume formats tend to inspire a lot of copycats in my experience.

When infographic resumes went through waves of popularity on social media I started receiving a lot of poorly constructed infographic-style resumes. Most of them came from junior candidates who thought they were going to stand above the crowd and impress us with their ingenuity. Maybe 1 out of every 10 was actually well-designed. The rest were just needlessly cryptic and failed to deliver the information I actually needed to see in a resume format. For example, I don’t want to see that someone rates themselves as 4/5 stars in Python. I need to see some text that explains their Python experience.

After reading 50 resumes in a row, the last thing I want to do is parse my way through non-standard resume formats.

This Rustdoc resume comes close to looking like a normal resume, which is good, but I would strongly suggest the author add a link at the beginning to a regular PDF resume that can be downloaded and shared.

The full resume should expand on the normal resume points, such as explaining their role and responsibilities at their current job and adding dates to employment ranges.

chc• 5 years ago

Like 90% of the job interviews I've been to have asked me something along the lines of "rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on these technologies," so maybe you don't want to see 4/5 stars in Python, but it does seem to be a pretty common wish.

dwenzek• 5 years ago

I'm missing the integration tests ;-)

jaimie• 5 years ago

I really like your header. As someone that makes hiring decisions, starting by showing your curiosity and reasoning as clearly as the Linux example, then immediately casting your mentorship and current position as an opportunity shows that you will be an engaged coworker that can push things to the next level. The resume itself showing that creative thinking.

It's not so much the way the content is presented, as much as the content itself!

pkolaczk• 5 years ago

If the resume has a good content, the only rule IMHO is it needs to be easy to read. It doesn't matter if you use LaTeX, Rustdoc, MS Word, Libre Office, HTML or markdown as long as I can quickly get all the information I want.

When I dealt with hiring for my team, I've never paid any attention to the formatting. Making formatting stand out from other resumes did not increase the chances for the resume to be picked and moved to the next stage. It did decrease them though, if crazy formatting made it harder to read.

Using Rustdoc might be "clever", but I don't find this resume very readable honestly. It took me some time to figure out what modules or structs mean in this context. Don't do this. Recruiters have really little time and they often get hundreds of resumes. If they can't get the essential information quickly enough, they'll just throw it out.

What makes an outstanding resume is in the content and how well it matches the job requirements. If I'm looking for a database engine expert and I get 999 resumes which all mention building websites in JS or machine learning models in Python, but one mentions experience on Linux kernel performance work (proven by accepted patches), which one do you think I'd choose?

Rustdoc résumé

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