CV of Failures [pdf]
princeton.edu
princeton.edu
I must have possibly the widest number of rejections by many of the most prestigious companies, NGOs and government institutions in the world.
Prestigious names like Google, Apple, Facebook, McKinsey, Stripe, The Guardian, BBC, UN, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Shell, Statoil, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, US Embassy London, UK Labour Party, UK Foreign Office, Stroz Freidberg, Billiter, Mandiant, Portland PR, KPMG, Deloitte - that's just a sample!
After awhile I decided I was just better off setting up my own company - and haven't looked back since. Now some of them work with and have to hire my company instead. :)
If anyone feels bored and wants to add your name to such an illustrious list, drop me an email with a job description, I'll make a fake application and you too can reject with the stars... :)
"Accounting is the language of business. Accurate, precise, and timely financial information is vital to the success of any business."
The problem is that it's estabilished as the new norm. Instead of accepting that maybe 0.1% accountants are passionate about their job and thus getting hiring like that is just a super-lucky coincidence, they actively seek them, forcing people to pretend about their passion for the job.
As a consequence, the companies lose candidates who would make excellent accountants, but are not able or not willing to lie during the interview. Another consequence is that people are generally unhappy to work in a place built on bullshit.
"Let's take a hypothetical view and say, in 7 to 10 years, when I make partner, there might be an opportunity for me to work on an account - a company with an unusual structure, with a novel, ground-breaking business, and unorthodox cashflows arrangements and asset valuations, and as an accountant I am going to write the story to highlight the strengths of the business while being fully cognizant of the risks, and the investors, the stakeholders, business management will appreciate the effort and hard-thinking we put in to make the story relevant and whole. And I want that to happen in my life.
but until that time, I know I have to put in the punishing work of auditing [or whatever dept you are applying to]. And I may not find it very enjoyable. Yet if I never take the first step, that end goal I just spoke about will never materialize."
you can talk about whatever is cool at that time. nowadays accounting for tech companies is all the rage and the methods for accounting for manufacturing or retail companies are not very relevant. back when I was just wrapping up my degree the Kraft-Nestle merger was the talk of the town.
Also don't take my suggestion too seriously - I am not an accountant.
On the other hand, if a trivial setback is enough to make you give up the career, better to get it early.
What was the terrible realisation? That you don't want to become an accountant?
I should note I have absolutely nothing against accountants!
(And yeah, likely have more rejections, but I automated generating custom resumes, submissions, etc. for some research on how resumes work.)
Umbrella actually uses some of the awesome EFF SSD content for some of our digital security stuff. Clearly we've broken a lot of stuff down to make it work in an app. Probably the major big difference is that Umbrella has a huge amount of stuff on physical and operational security. Along with psychosocial issues like dealing with PTSD in the field.
Our content (like EFF SSD) is CC so available here: https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_content
I'm directly interested as I'm putting together my first resume.
Point of a resume is to get an invite for an interview.
Generally speaking that you'll get/create the most value by knowing as much as possible about the job, company, staff, etc. - and if possible speaking with the hiring manager before providing a resume; it's rare that a company won't want a resume at all. By delaying handing over a resume though, you have the most opportunity to match it to their expectations.
Main key is to realize how important your first jobs are to your future success and put a lot of effort into finding the best opportunities possible.
Good luck!
I know that life before social media wasn't much different, in that people still gossiped, bragged about their accomplishments and so on. But social media amplifies these traits enormously and presents them to you daily in a concise list of why everyone is doing better than you.
I can imagine it being incredibly freeing to drop that pretense, both for others and oneself.
If I ever have children I'll make sure to teach them from the moment they are old enough to understand that social media is just posturing, self-promotion and narcissism, and in no way representative of 'real' people or 'real' lives. I wouldn't mind if they would use it, as long as it's pretty damn clear that the image other people paint of themselves is not something to aspire for.
The first company where I started developer, the developer egos I had to deal with were consistent with the egos of outside sales people. Most of them were quite active on social media touting the latest release of this iphone game, or this huge website they got done in three days. I only found out later that while most were true, there was a definite bending of reality in terms of what they actually did and how long it actually took.
After I left the company were the developers , I purged all my social media, keep Twitter as a news feed and only followed people who I had a common interest in and were actually inspiring to me. It completely changed my perspective on what people say they do and what they actually do.
It makes a big difference when you listen to the people who are actually humble in what they do compared to those who are only out for the retweets or excited looks from other developers.
Learned how to read requirements and put in fudge factors on budget estimates.
Glad I'm not in that business anymore.
P.S. I hate how things work.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc Uploaded on Aug 25, 2006)
In any case, I pick conferences largely based on their location (if I can get paid to go) rather than their academic merit. That's what journals are for!
In retrospective, I think every single paper I wrote was rejected at least once, but I always read carefully the reviews to try to improve them. For what I can remember, many reviews were about little stupid things which I just interpreted as the reviewer "didn't like it".
Keep on going, but know when to quit. At least two papers I wrote didn't got anywhere and I had to throw them out the window..
"Meta-Failures
2016 This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention than my entire body of academic work"
Poor guy
Lovely discussion here with Stuart Firestein who just spent some time with philosophers of Science. It's long but quite on point although more biological than economic, it still addresses structural issues as well as replicability. http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-385/ Enjoy. It's +Vincent Racaniello.
The audio is long, the relevant part starts about 30 minutes in. That said, I recommend the whole bit, though the first 10-20 minutes are a bit rambly.
h/t Bob Calder on G+
The G+ thread on which I posted this had a comment to the effect of "but he's a senior tenured academic, he can afford to do this", to which I say, "precisely, and he has".
Brings to mind another item I'd come across recently, regarding promoting open discussion in groups:
1. Let the junior member(s) speak first. They can venture into topics others won't.
2. Senior members, speaking later, can establish cultural norms by, say, giving credit and credence to earlier comments, and by admitting their own errors and mistakes (as here).
The cultural message is hugely powerful.
No wonder he gets no replies.. :-)
I failed at
* getting onto the football at my school, even I tried very hard.
* getting a date to my high school dance.
* starting a family before I was 35.
....
Anyone who's worked for a failed startup (like moi) has cost people money, sometimes some serious dough. And it really sucks when you know you've cost people money, even if that's part of the investor process.
Ergo, this isn't a very compelling list of failures to me. Good idea, though.
I tried to convey an image of simplicity and minimalism, which are things I appreciate when developing, and it has landed me so far a job in a local startup and some interviews for remote positions in several countries (USA, Italy, France, UK, Spain, Germany,..).
Here it is: http://joaoventura.net/static/files/resume.pdf
Kudos.
Also, notice the FailCVs of other people that he links to. Some of those FailCvs (or the sections of them) are very very short. Likely that is due to not wanting to spend time on something that is painful like this, or that this just takes too much time for a side project. Still, are the FailCVs of successful people shorter in general, accounting for their successes? (IE you don't apply for as many jobs when you have one). Are the successful actually more successful when controlling for the stochastic nature of awards?
A less uncharitable comment might have included more about your own experiences and feelings and omitted the strong claim about someone else's motivations.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11584417 and marked it off-topic.