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Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

> In my experience, for a pure engineering role, nobody seems to care.

I am interviewing a lot of people. I look very suspicious at these kinds of moves to try to impress me.

I don't necessarily ignore, but I try to figure out if this is some kind of shallow engagement.

It impresses me if you can stick to something meaningful and do it regularly for years but you can just as well hurt your chances if you propose 5 simple commits to random projects on Github to be your greatest accomplishment.

A blog about programming is not going to impress me if you are still junior engineer. Rather, it is worrying. I always remind people to learn something first before you try to teach other people.

I will still want to see you code yourself out of a paper bag.

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> I always remind people to learn something first before you try to teach other people.

Teaching is one the greatest ways to learn and develop your relation and vocabulary for what you are currently learning. It’s one of the greatest tricks a good college class will pull, having students continually drag each other a step further as they learn something new and then have to explain it to their peers. Most blogging is this kind of “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”, so it’s seems to me you might be dismissing some eager learners if you think the act of blogging is self-important.

> Teaching is one the greatest ways to learn and develop your relation and vocabulary for what you are currently learning

Oh sure it is.

I studied theoretical math and I found teaching other students math was great way to get it organized in my head. But we also had professor and I wasn't teaching anybody original ideas, just the material that was already written and defined.

Now I have decades of development experience I still find explaining things to other people a very useful and efficient way to get my thoughts organized.

I kinda exclude blogs with posts of the form "see, I have found something interesting today!" or "I just spent 5 hours solving this problem, writing down solution here so you don't have to waste time". This is fine.

But if you have 3 years of experience in development and start writing blog posts criticizing OOP, that is definitely not going to help your case.

I mean, it is highly unlikely you got enough experience and thinking done to even understand OOP, let alone start criticizing it.

Rather than making conclusions based on their level, see the arguments they have in their article and if it's doubtful they didn't come up with those thoughts on their own, but simply copy pasted, then ask them to elaborate on some things and it will be clear.

I find this attitude a bit sad :( I think there's at least one place we agree which is that it's annoying when people do shiny yet perfunctory things as basically a gimmick or trick to convey the impression of depth that just isn't there.

But... I think someone with 3 years of experience deeply engaging with the question of OOP is a great thing to do. You're not wrong that they can't possibly know, but that's not relevant I think. Trying to own the domain and think critically about the sacred cows and reinvent the useful parts is exactly what a good autodidact has to do. And doing it in public view, available for critique and ridicule, I think puts skin in the game and shows character.

There's something to be said for certainty and epistemic humility, but also I think basically everyone who ever invented a truly new thing or learned something nontrivial on their own had to bring enough audacity to the table to get over the line.

Maybe it's a personality difference and you're making the right choice for the type of personality you want your org to have.

I don't keep a blog to impress you. Nor to "try to teach other people"; if anything I use it to teach myself (ie to organize my own thoughts and to document my learning).

Blogs are simple media to share one's thoughts, because one likes to write and... to share---that is it. If you don't care for my writing and my sharing then you're free to move on.

The beautiful thing about knowledge is that it's free and open to anyone, implying that junior engineers shouldn't have blogs is next level elitism and conceit. That is what I find worrying.

I feel sorry for the people having to interview with you or working under you, that need to code themselves "out of a paper bag" to impress you.

And that is perfectly fine.

You know what is not fine? Telling people they need blogs or open source projects to get better chance at getting work.

Because then I get candidates that spent a lot of their time and effort doing something they did not really want to do rather than getting better at what they want to.

> I feel sorry for the people having to interview with you or working under you, that need to code themselves "out of a paper bag" to impress you.

I feel sorry for the people that have to work with you if you feel ability to demonstrate you can program is not a prerequisite for working in a development team.

>A blog about programming is not going to impress me if you are still junior engineer.

I don't quite agree here. Junior engineer doesn't always say much about skill. People can have deep knowledge in a field like reverse engineering but still work as a junior because they got out of college 1-2 years ago.

When it comes to junior/senior titles I get the feeling age is more important than "skill".

I get what you're saying though, you should never act like you're a god amongst men, but blogposts that show deep knowledge aren't something I would dismiss.

> if you are still junior engineer. Rather, it is worrying. I always remind people to learn something first before you try to teach other people.

The curse of knowledge is also a thing: An expert might have a harder time explaining things to a novice. A novice can more easily explains things to a fellow novice.

And if someone gets something wrong on the internet, sooner or later someone else will point it out. #XKCD386

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