I wanna work at Instagram

You can't predict every variable. Sometimes one vote helps bring it to the front page and it picks up steam. I suspect the Instagram brand gave this website extra attention.

Because as many here would probably not like to accept, HNers are just as prone to social engineering as the guy on Facebook who signs up for the app that can supposedly revert his Facebook page back to the old design.

HN can be gamed quite easily, for this and other reasons.

Since you're near the top of this thread, which itself is sitting at the top of the HN front page, why not link to your site here? I wouldn't mind.

She is cute...

Disclaimer: I'm not HR

I would say that recent grads still have the same issue. In college, you write a lot of large projects; and, if you felt so inclined outside of your regular curriculum (if it was bored, or you wanted to go the next step in a project you liked, etc), you may want to do projects in your spare time. All of those large [curricular or not] activities you did can be put on your resume!

I certainly don't have the end-all-be-all resume, but alongside my college work experience, my resume contained such things as: * a neural network (NEAT) based, othello game board evaluator (done for a grad project); and, * a back-propagation based neural network project, also done as a grad project for a different class.

I had quite an obsession with NNs in school (still do).

My point is: even projects you've done in school can count as things you've done that are worth considering.

As for career switchers, if they're going to go into a higher level position, I would encourage them to show that they can do what the higher-level job is asking of them, and saying "I've done this on my own!" through projects is one way to do that.

Isn't that the strategy? How can it reach the 1-5 hiring people if the masses at HN don't upvote?

"...and you will have still better returns doing actual networking rather than hoping someone on the Internet will stumble across your hidden potential and give you a shot."

This is such a retarded market inefficiency. Someone here should do something about it.

Open programming contests for job seekers? Open Source awards for job seekers?

I don't know enough about how the hiring process works, de facto.

You might want to re-read my comment. Nowhere did I say that marketing doesn't matter. Nowhere did I say that you should just build more stuff and not write a resume to market yourself.

On the contrary, my comment began "To write an effective resume..." Translation: the rest of the comment is going to be advice to my fellow HNers about how to market themselves. I'm not sure how you interpreted "showcase your actual work well and present it in the most impressive possible light" as "just create another project on github".

My point is that this particular resume answers all the wrong questions. All the questions I don't really care about when I'm making a hiring decision. Only at the end does she say "So... What're ya waiting for!?" and link to her portfolio. And her portfolio isn't nearly as well done as all the fluff sections ("I'm vehement about creating kick-ass interactions" and "I never wear high heels"). This is a mistake. The most prominent and polished part of her resume should showcase her actual work. She should answer the question "What have you built?" right away and in impressive fashion. Note that the question isn't "Have you built stuff?"; it's "What have you built?" So, the fact that Stuff Got Built, as you say, isn't very important. I don't care that "clearly, she can build stuff." I care to see what she's built. So, show it to me. In other words "showcase your actual work well and present it in the most impressive possible light."

But what can she contribute to the Instagram team? Is their UX in dire need of a UX designer?

It's fine as a resumé and general job application for everyone who reads the story, but she directs her application to Instagram - but it might as well not have been.

It's not a lack of display of talent that I think is what she misses (although she tells a lot of things about herself that she doesn't show); it's that she doesn't show how she can help Instagram, and why Instagram would need her.

Maybe they have an available UX job position that I am unaware of, but she'd improve her chances if she directed her application to Instagram specifically.

Here is an exercise (for everyone): replace all instances of "Instagram" in the application with any arbitrary start-up name. There is little to underscore her passion and usefulness for Instagram (specifically) - she might as well have made the same website with five other domains with "Twitter", "Tumblr", etc. instead of "Instagram" in the URL and design. (She has that "No high heels" part, but that could be a variable to be replaced in every instance.)

This doesn't mean that I believe that she's done this(!), but a specifically directed application should be much harder to arbitrarily change to work for another start-up.

(I don't write all this to hate on her, as I've said in other comments in this thread, but there are some great, important lessons to be learnt. This is, after all, a great way to land yourself a job - if you pull it off.

Again, this will only help her career. It's just that it could be improved.)

Your comment fails the "say it to my face" guideline.

I certainly wouldn't vote this stuff up, but no need to be rude about it.

(Edit: also, why keep downvoting him, I think he probably gets the idea already)

I think it shows off her design skills and her lack of ability to write good copy, but I would've put the portfolio bit far higher up. - "here's my 1-paragraph spiel about me, here's what I've done, and at the end, put all the cutesy bits"

I'm not sure I understand: are employers supposed to be positive and not critical when hiring people?

It's a designer showing her work to a potential employer. I made a comment that her work is not yet good enough, there are certainly areas which she can improve.

As for your ad hominem: I'm not actually a negative person.

Some people don't enjoy working in pseudo-positive and falsely encouraging environments that give second-rate work an undeserved pass. There's something motivating about standards and demands.

The critique might have been harsh, but it was also constructive. It's not like he came out and called her work crap. He gave useful feedback on the design.

He's not being negative he is critiquing a designer's work on the merit of that work. These are facts.

He prefaces it by saying that there is no offence intended. Even if it may come across as negative, it's clearly in the best interest based on the preface.

Why do you want to look at my site? Will this somehow make my points invalid? :-) Oh, this guy can't design, so no, kerning is right.

I'm not a designer, and although I design everything for my products myself, I don't pretend that my design work is good; hell, I know that I lack attention to detail, and I'll be the first person to criticize my work.

If you insist, here you go: http://www.codingrobots.com/ (the most recent thing I drew was this, I think: http://www.codingrobots.com/images/cathodique_128.png [this reminded me that this product is dead, and I need to release this icon into the public domain], and I can point out why it's not good, and why it's the best I can do at this moment).

BTW, I'm not looking for a job.

Edit: while the spotlight is on my, I'd like to say that design is a very fricking hard work. Every time I try to draw an icon or position elements on a web page, it's like going to hell -- it takes forever and causes pains. Programming is easier ;-)

As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes (or convert it afterwards)? Am I supposed to use the html code or special key combination every time?

Here’s an image of the actual lens, from the same angle: http://a.img-dpreview.com/news/0602/panasonic/leica14-50mm-0...

If you look at the copy, the label text is set around a much wider circle than it should be. Also, the characters are relatively larger, a lot wider, with smaller letter spacing, than the original.

Here's the approximate path of text: http://i.imgur.com/Usrgf.png

compare: http://i.imgur.com/uD9nT.png (thanks, Samuel_Michon)

The font is okay, but kerning is not good -- you can clearly see it in "VARIO" (IO), and E72 (7).

Of course, I can't, but I'm not a designer, unlike her.

If she can win over edw519, I'm sure it doesn't hurt to put it in your application. Regardless of what can be construed from it. :)

Telling an employer what they want to hear without the employer noticing is still a skill, no less.

It's targeted in one way, and in one way only: via mention. Sure, the domain name includes the word "Instagram." Similarly, it's in the page's title.

However, the connection is surprisingly superficial. As you point out, she offers a comically generic application and then emphasizes that, you know, working at Instagram would be, like, cool. I find that a little cynical.

You mean probability of her being unique is atleast 0.78, dont you?

As being unique would be rather a binary state, either one is unique of not.

You eventually have to eat, even if Instagram doesn't want you to work for them.

I don't see how the constraints of one system, whether they are right or wrong, really affects the ability of a UX designer to recognize and work within those constraints.

Although I highly agree with you on how Apple messed up by making "maximizing" such a pain, at the same time, I (not a Mac user, but had to use one for work for around 5 months) almost never have my browser maximized, even when on multiple screens. So it's still a valid point that Lewisham brought up.

This website gives the impression that she still needs some practice in her UX design skills.

Get the app "Cinch" from the app store if you're on OSX, and especially if you're on a big monitor. It's frankly better than a maximize button, as it also lets you do side-by-side half screen windows.

(I am not associated with this app, just a happy customer.)

I'd say the maximize button is in itself a bad design idea. Hit the green button on the browser window and it will expand to the width (or height) whereby scroll bars are no longer necessary. This 'maximizes' your screen real estate, rather than blowing it all on one window/app like a Windows maximize button. Also, while it's not a bad idea to keep page widths in the 750-1050ish range, No True Mac User would object to using their UI controls to optimize their viewing. I mean that's why they're there.

Apple doesn't even have a maximize button. I believe you're referring to the green(+) button which is technically called the zoom button. I refer to it as the optimize button since it resizes the window based on the content and when appropriate, will maximize the window to fill the screen. There are a few instances where the button does something completely off the wall, like in iTunes where it shrinks it down to the mini-player. If Apple is guilty of anything, it's not having a consistent function for that button. It's a wildcard.

Opera 11 on Linux looks like this for me: http://upurs.us/image/24755.jpeg Maybe I don't have the proper font. It looks awful.

Thanks for clarification - as I have never used instagram nor seen their job page. It's a good rendering (sans fonts), if nothing else.

Don't let it stop you. Understand going in that there will be noise in the feedback, and to sort through it to extract the valuable feedback. Its not personal, because the judgmental don't really know you.

ambition isn't posting a mediocre and derivative personal website, replete w/ trite copy, on Hacker News in a (hopefully quixotic) attempt to get a job at a small startup.

That doesn't dispute his points even remotely.

As for 'poorly typeset', I have no choice to agree, if only because her portfolio page implies that her name is "Netta & Design".

Her customer work looks good though, so if, as I assume, she's seeking a design-oriented role, she'd likely do well in a team (where somebody else can say 'Hey, what's up with this bolding?') The fonts in her personality chart are barely there.

Completely offtopic, I'm always wary of people who tell me how funny they are. If you're funny, I'll almost certainly figure that out organically.

I disagree with your disagreement ;). We see one of these every week; Some kid lacks the qualifications for a job, so they make an uncreative boilerplate web page bullshitting about how much they love the company they're applying to work at.

They usually work, but that doesn't make it any more ambitious or creative than the last 20,000 of them.

It's a two-hour webpage that says "I wanna work at Instragram", but doesn't answer the important questions. Why do you want to work at Instagram? How are you uniquely qualified to work at Instagram?

I feel sorry for companies that fall for this sort of thing.

I don't want employees who love my product, I want employees who are competent. this example is telling in that although the prospective employee clearly wants the job she is also clearly not a particularly talented designer.

Employees who love their own product are a cancer that must be treated. Complacency with a product necessarily leads to a dangerous inability to find ways to improve upon it.

I do speak from long experience, here. This isn't a crazy idea I read out of a dogfooding blog entry.

because I'd quite like my designers to be capable of creativity, whereas this Instagram application is derivative in every single way.

It's also a bit like blackmailing, in my opinion.

Exactly. If this woman was to be hired, she'd probably take in everything shown to her. Honestly, if there's a position open for someone that passionate but a bit rough around the edges, find a junior role to put them in within a team she can really learn from.

Depending greatly on the short and long term situations, I'd rather hire someone enthusiastic and wait a few months for them to get up to speed than hire someone with more experience who is dispassionate about the job. There's just so much more room for growth with the former (and initial salary negotiation should be a cakewalk from a management perspective).

Congratulations on putting in the time and passion. Fantastic effort and I have no doubt something will come of it for you.