Thats what im thinking. The thing is that I specifically said on my cover letter “I have some classroom practice with xyz but no practical experience but I am willing to learn” and one of the interviwers goes “Do you have experience with xyz?” it was really frustrating.
Consider what it’s like to be an interviewer. I’m about to interview someone 20 minutes from now. I saw their resume for the first time yesterday. I know absolutely nothing else about them. No cover letter, no nothing.
I suppose my thinking was that they’ve had my resume and cover letter for weeks I’d assume they read it. Well now I know not to expect that.
At every company I’ve worked at the person who has had your resume and cover letter for weeks is some HR mystery land. The person like me who actual does the interview gets the resume and a meeting schedule and then gives feedback afterwards.
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That is a fucked up way to do it IMO but if that’s how its generally done its good to know and I’ll keep that in mind for sure.
One thing I’ve learned, that’s served me well, but I don’t think I’ve fully internalized it yet, despite about 5 years of trying is:
Things on the inside are nowhere near as good, organized, reasonable or competent as they seem from the outside.
My last company was bought by another much bigger, and more silicon valley-y tech company. And it took like a month before that actually meant anything to people like me. So for like a month we were mostly bullshitting our jobs knowing none of it mattered and waiting to be given new stuff to do by our new overlords and learning what we could about our new overlords, both from what they told us and what we could research on our own.
On paper the new guys seemed larger than life. Tonnes of business, a huge codebase, buildings all over the world, and so on and so on. Finally we get put on new teams and into new sprints and whatever. First few days we hear about this sweet new demo of some bullshit I don’t remember what it was. And the guy gets on the call, and says “so we have the thing in this warehouse we bought recently, and we’d like to show you, but we lost the key and can’t get in to show you, so we wanna move this back a few days” amateur hour.
Did they do all that stuff, with the codebase and the buildings and whatever? Yeah. Were these some talented people who really displayed some skill while I worked there? Yeah. But stuff on the inside is regularly more amateur than it appears outside. I’m sure people lose keys to warehouses at google and apple and whatever other huge company the world would have you believe is super competent.
I’ve personally been in the situation where my boss was planning to interview someone and I didn’t even know that was happening, then with the guy in the office my boss is needed for something and hands me his resume and asks me if I can do it. That is to say, I interviewed a poor fellow (well at least until my boss got back a half hour later) without having even seen his resume, until he was in the room with me. I only had a vague understanding of the position he was applying for. It happens.
Yup, Totally been in that position of
“hey, interview this guy for me!”
No resume, no cover letter, I didn’t even know we were hiring for any position. So I BS with his for like 40 minutes waiting on the guy who is actually going to do the interview and they arrive, quick pull me out and asks
“So what do you think?”
Uh he’s okay I guess?
“Can he do the job?”
no clue dude, no one told me what job he’s applying for, just that he’s some reference from someone else in the company, the guy applying doesn’t even know what job he’d get if he was hired! How the hell should I know if he can “do the job”
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I’ve only had to do a few interviews. The one time I had serious concerns, I was ignored on that (and the person ended up being a serious failure over the long run). Most of the time it was for entry level people, and just showing up on time, knowing a few things, and not being an asshole were enough. Sometimes that didn’t work out over the long run, but you can’t always tell someone’s going to say… get divorced in the next six months and go crazy during it.
Boo Ya: Was able to get the correct cables in to install microphone on a boom arm so that it does not take up desk space
Fail: I am missing an adapter to get the shock mount to connect to the boom arm. Found one online and waiting a week for it to arrive.
Boo Ya: I just spent the day volunteering at New Hampshire PoutineFest 2019, it was lots of fun.
Fail: It was a 10 hour day mostly consisting of emptying trash. I now smell like beer and gravy, and the volunteer shirt I was given is already ruined.
I have been working on a solo coding project for about a year. Today I learned about a company:
- Founded by one of Napster’s cofounders
- In 2016
- That raised $20MM
- Shut down a year later
- And made almost exactly what I have been working on.
This comes on the same day as the 10th birthday of one of the inspirations for my project, Pinboard. Their founder posted this today.
What does the future hold for Pinboard? Death! The bus that one day comes for us all! The skeletal, icy hand on an unprepared shoulder! Pain, a flash of light, then numbing darkness. So back up your bookmarks.
It’s kind of a surreal feeling. Like I’m living in about 3 levels of Ozymandias.
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Boo-Yah: All the pre con work that you have set for yourself is done, now need to clean car and pack
Fail: Your $500 printer was sacrificed to make this happen, the only words of encouragement given is that “check the warranty to have it fixed” in lieu of having the company which caused it to die to actually pay you to have it fixed
Fedex/Kinko’s printing prices are really affordable. I’d highly suggest printing commercially with them next time you need to print in volume for a Con. They even have an app that lets you send the documents you want to print w the specifications (copies, paper, color v b&w v grayscale) ahead of time for a scheduled pickup and pay via the app so you just show up and confirm its all good and leave.
I did all the ctcon printing at Staples. They had next-day turnaround for most formats.
You can make a personal Pinboard in NextCloud.
Am finally comfortable enough with my written Italian to interact with people on Italian twitter and ask questions about the still developing story and ask for like news sources.
Fail, my twitter handle is the most 13-year-old edgelord bullshit but in Italian, and I’m worried I’m gonna get called out on it.
Got a vasectomy last Friday (Boo-Yah) and driving to work today I remember just how fucking bad Portland, OR roads are (fail).
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Paid off my student loan!
Well a month ago. Now I’ve actually got the benefit of that for the the first month. I have actually been very lucky because fees were much lower when I was a student (2002-2005) and I qualified for benefits due to my low income background.
It feels really strange to say that: low income background. Those that meet me assume I am from a well off background because I speak well and was sheltered from actual poverty. My mum owns her own home, she’d got that far before the money troubles but now the mortgage is paid and she’s in boomer prime mode and adopted all the attitudes to fit.
I see actual poor places these days and there’s no such low income background benefits to let people born into it mobilise like I have. It’s stupid, I will enjoy the money and the financial benefit to this but geez, it fucking sucks. I mean what can we even do?
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Apparently I left my wallet at the cash register when I was grocery shopping yesterday. When I woke up I had a message on facebook by a woman I didn’t know, asking me whether I had lost my wallet. She was the cashier that evening. Sprinted down to the super market and got it back, cash and all cards still in there. Thank fuck.
Boo-yah: Moved about as painlessly and quickly as is reasonable thanks to amazing moving company. Super pro. Super speedy.
Fail: Awesome moving company was not cheap. Also, it is going to take a long time to unpack everything. T_T
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