Show HN: Helping people choosing the right career | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Helping people choosing the right career

whatforwork.com

13 pointswhatforwork14 comments

I like this idea.

After reading the comments here and visiting your site, I decided to see if there was specialty information on developing software for silicon (i.e. FPGAs) as that is very different than software development at Facebook or Google--yet all might fall under the description Software Developer. I'm thinking some way to differentiate that so that people can figure out if they want to make horizontal moves or what a horizontal move might be like would be useful--especially when you get more reviews.

Another question I have is about the incentive for people to provide job descriptions--are you thinking karma or some other benefit?

This idea has a lot of really interesting crossover--for instance just confining it to the developer space, not only is it interesting to contrast being a developer at say NPM, Mozilla, Facebook, Google, Maxim, Xilinx and Qualcomm, but to also see those development environments and tools (i.e. Twitch style) is interesting. I know there was someone who was doing that and I followed it briefly a few years ago.

Lots of really good feedback here. Thank you.

In order to ensure quality and qualified job descriptions, i've had to hire the submissions. Unfortunately, philanthropic motivations have not as of yet been sufficient.

That being said, if you want to make a submission for silicon i'd love to see it.

I think this is a great idea. I've always felt that primary and secondary education should be teaching people about the work world. There's just so many specializations out there that people aren't familiar with. And it's sad to see people have to go through 6 years of school before finding out that they didn't want to go into that field.

Anyways, I created a site that's slightly related. It helps people find out what programming skills are in highest demand in their city: https://skilldime.com

Let me know if you want to partner up, maybe some kind of blog post or link exchange or something. I think either one of our audiences would appreciate knowing about the other.

Email me at info@whatforwork.com and we can see if there's some sort of collaboration that makes sense.

Problem: Many people are in careers they hate.

Theory: Most people get into a career thinking its something its not.

Solution: Create a library of job descriptions written by people in those jobs in order to provide real world insight into various roles.

Would love to get your feedback on the idea, UI/UX, and anything else you'd like to share.

Jeremy

Descriptions and reviews are great but nothing beats experience. Job descriptions and job roles are many times different as well.

But it looks like you're not trying to replace glassdoor. A "day in the life" type descriptions would certainly have their place.

Nothing beats experience. I completely agree. I found that very hard to find online. So in an attempt to help others looking for it, I created what I thought was the next best thing. From the horses mouth so to speak...

I love the honest descriptions and mission you are driving on here. As the other poster said, a lot of it will come down to "experience is the best." (at least in my opinion too).

I see the value draw to younger people who aren't really sure what they want to do, or older workers who might want to jump to a new career path. Nothing beats candid opinions.

I don't see much you should add, adding more feels like it would try to make the product do more than it should; I feel it's great where its at.

Well done.

"teamwork" and "can work remotely" are flipped in the similarity graph of the job explorer: https://whatforwork.com/job-explorer/ That is, "teamwork" returns results for "can work remotely" and vice-versa.

What a good catch. Thank you!

I like this project. Working in HR for a while, I saw some people hating their jobs. Some of them were hanging in there because they did not know how it's like to make a lateral move to other job or to a similar job in other company. I feel that linking the job description to companies would be something really interesting. I do not feel that this will turn into Glassdoor, even if I assume that will attract some hate from ex-employees and some subjective job descriptions.

I've considered the possibility of connecting this to indeed or monster, but at this point im trying to focus on education not placement. That being said, i'm open to this leading me to the appropriate market. I just want to make sure I help kids choose careers as that's a large part of how my idea came to be in the first place(personal experience).

Glassdoor is a common comparison because they have user submitted reviews, but those reviews are of what its like to work for a given company. As contrast, my site is what its like to do a given job.

Thank you!

Interesting idea! How did you source these job descriptions?

I gathered each one individually myself. I’ve got a link on my site for people to submit their job descriptions and it brings them to a survey. I was able to evaluate submitters experience before I directed them to the link. It’s been a very tiresome process. But, some code really helped to integrate the job descriptions into the site so that they were searchable.

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