Jonathan Oxer Needs a Job | Hacker News Reader

Jonathan Oxer Needs a Job

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34 pointshownottowrite33 comments

Another data point on the lightyears-wide gap between people who do things and the whiteboard-centric, "top schools required" tech world.

Speaking as another bootstrap engineer, I eventually had to make a turn into marketing and sales. Compared with engineering organizations, those are far more pragmatic about their hires, especially for candidates with proven abilities to communicate well. It is sad to step away from being a maker, but it does pay the bills and coworkers are at least decent people.

Can you offer proof of said credentials? I've heard of him. That's his credential. His work speaks for itself.

Have I heard of you?

A top school isn't a guarantee of success, but it's a credential that might mean something more than simply your ow personal self opinion.

I remember him from this video, where he describes how his product "Freetronics Experimenters Kit for Arduino" was copied by another company.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW8K9D9u5aI

Seems like a pretty standup guy who has done a lot of cool stuff!

> 30 seconds looking at the hiring requirements immediately disqualifies me. I’d never even make it past the filters to the first interview.

Sounds like he's taking those requirements too seriously. It's true that going through a HR department would likely get him filtered out, but there's plenty of smaller companies and such where hiring managers are the ones looking at the resume. They can look past the fact that there's no "education" section and instead just a long track record of really delivering value.

Definitely taking them too seriously. As someone who's been on the inside of several big companies the hiring managers often have a ton of power to get the people they want in. If his friends are there, that's an excellent starting point. Applying to a big company in this case is a worthwhile experiment, just don't go through the front door without the referral.

Agreed that this sentence is silly and represents a mistake that far too many people make.

It's not silly if too many people are repeating the mistake. I'm hunting desperately for a job and when I see requirements, I assume those are hard requirements, not soft.

Nice-to-haves, etc., can be soft requirements and I'll keep those in mind.

You need to assume that all requirements are basically soft if you can persuade somebody that you can fill the role. Especially if you can explicitly match your real world skills and experience to compensating for specific requirements. One requirement that I think is especially useless is "n years experience"... It means so little. I treat the requirements as conversation starters, not deal breakers. Disclaimer: I work in social services, not tech, and I've hired people mostly based on their performance in actual interviews and how they treat the folks they'll work with. If you think you are a great fit and can do the work, go sell it. Can't hurt.

Sounds like he's taking those requirements too seriously.

"Taking them at face value" was how I read it.

And if that's "taking things to seriously", well then -- that outlines a shortcoming on the company's side.

> that outlines a shortcoming on the company's side.

Or not, if they want to hire employees that won't give up easily when faced by challenging situations.

Or not, if they want to hire employees that won't give up easily when faced by challenging situations.

Like incoherent, pretentious or otherwise detached-from-reality job description, you mean?

Yeah, I happily give up on "challenges" like those all the time. If a company already can't communicate honestly and effectively at that stage in the process, they definitely aren't worth the bother.

Meh. If something sounds cool, but I don't fit all their "must haves", I'd still consider it worthwhile to at least talk to someone about it. Then again, they're usually the ones who contacted me first, so it's not like I have to get past the automated resume sorter.

That's the thing -- it's an entirely different ballgame on the ambiguity front when they've contacted you first (versus the other way around). In that case, at least presumably they've already mulled over the potential skill gap, and (again, at least presumably) saw something in you that significantly outweighs that gap.

OTOH, if they have a big sign on the front door that says "requires 5-8 years of X,Y,Z" -- in addition to all the other randomness one has to deal with when initiating contact (Will they ever respond? And will they ask me do some silly exercise requiring 5-20 hours before proceeding pass the initial contact?) -- then of course my answer is "Meh, I think I'll pass."

And if they genuinely expect candidates to be "bold" and second-guess their stated, bold-font "must-have" requirements, then they've definitely entrusted the wrong person to edit the final copy of their job reqs -- or they're playing (some really quite silly) head games with themselves.

I think writing job descriptions for ads is crappy work that nobody wants to do and they are often rushed or out of date. Granted, selling idea that your 8-week bootcamp puts you up there with 8 years of somebody else's experience is not really possible. But turning 3 years into 8 years can be if you can show maturity in your working practices and maybe some passion for the subject. You don't have to be exact person in the requirements. You DO have to convince somebody that you are on that same level of knowledge/capability, just for different reasons.

But do you really want to spend your precious time talking to people who can't get something as simple as a job req right?

If they can't communicate coherently at that stage in the process (and/or just as likely, don't really know what they went from the person they're hiring) then they're probably confused and/or uncommunicative about a whole lot of other things internally, is my general take.

>don't really know what they went from the person they're hiring

I think this is spot on in terms of those incredibly long lists of skills you sometimes see. If they don't know what is important, they just ask for a Swiss Army knife. And that intimidates people who take the reqs seriously. Maybe your right that it's a signal of a potentially bad environment too.

Good signal with that response. I'm not sure if the guy doesn't understand how the game is played, or if he's needy and expects someone to say "no, no, you're totally qualified, please apply." Given he just posted a huge list of his accomplishments, I'm guessing it's the first one.

Either way, I'm not sure why that particular brand of pedantry is so popular among engineers, but it's exhausting working with people who take everything humans say literally.

I think he was being ironic, not pedantic. Kind of a simultaneous commentary on what less-qualified engineers might have going through their head while pointing out how ridiculous it is that companies present the requirements as non-negotiable.

Maybe they're not "requirements" then?

This probably is one of the best ways for someone of his notoriety to get connected to his next gig. I'm very confident he could generate a number of excellent leads just by talking around to his local tech companies.

It's the people who don't have decades of success behind them who languish between jobs because they don't have a degree or $BIG_BUSINESS on their resume.

This is a good cautionary tale for younger developers.

Know how to market yourself, or you'll end up throwing yourself a public pity party to try to get a job (sorry for being harsh, but that's what a post full of impressive achievements followed by "I'm broke and unemployed at 46, and not qualified for anything" is).

This guy has probably more cumulative knowledge and experience than 99% of the developers at any famous large company or startup. But there are tens of thousands of engineers nowhere near as good as he is making a quarter million, half million dollars a year or more, while he's posting about being broke.

A common objection to this is that you have to pick between pleasing recruiters or pursuing your passion. But that's a false dichotomy! François Chollet, John Carmack, or Yves Lecun to name a few are the best in the world at their specific niche, and they're not in that situation - as are many others with slightly less impressive resumes than they have. So clearly it can be done.

Edit: surprised to be so quickly downvoted. You'd think that for a site where raising millions of dollars is glorified every day, HNers would consider being a broke technical genius a bug, not a feature. Either this is the very first thing the guy did when looking for a job, in which case I find it very odd (can you imagine if John Carmack posted something about how he needs a job but he's "not qualified for anything"?); or he's posting this after many emails sent, interviews passed, coffee had, etc., in which case this only adds to my point.

public pity party

It's actually him shamelessly humblebragging. I'm not sure why it was posted.

I thought it was pretty brilliant advertising.

Yeah, but do you have a job to offer him? If not, you're not the target audience.

> François Chollet

Best in the world at what?

I've met Jon and like him.

This is an "I'm a goddamn superstar and I'm advertising myself as such." Post.

This is not actually about inability to get a job or university requirements - that's some window dressing on the (justified) boast. This is about Jon getting a superstar's job. And why not? He probably deserves it and then some. Don't let anyone undersell you the importance of marketing.

I would have hard time believing a respectable workplace rejecting his resume, if he applied to one.

I wouldn't. Most workplaces automate the first few passes because of how much resume spam they get hit with.

Now I'd have a hard time imagining a good workplace rejecting him if an actual human saw his resume.

> I'd have a hard time imagining a good workplace rejecting him if an actual human saw his resume.

Then you haven't ever worked with someone like this. All the resume says to me is "internally motivated engineer with resources". That doesn't mean he will work well on any of your teams or on the projects you need done.

I can see places rejecting him because he's TOO qualified and that he won't stick around for boring work.

Except most workplaces don't need any of that experience, and certainly not the "I am so great" attitude. Note how none of his projects involve "collaborated a team people to get done something bigger than what anyone could do by themselves".

I wonder if something happened to Freetronics, or if it was never particularly profitable at all.

Just doesn't make enough money (according to a comment of his on that post).

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