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Comment by thrwyoilarticle | Hacker News Reader

Opinion: LaTeX resumes/CVs don't make any sense.

If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX. You might use it for a paper or a book where you have a lot of content or multiple issues that you want to look consistent. But a resume is a single, small document with multiple different sections that have different formatting requirements.

In your job, you probably share information in markdown or rst. If you're looking to signal - and let's be honest, with LaTeX you are - why not use those?

Bonus: ATS systems and recruiters won't bork your input.

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LaTeX has good typography. I'd rather look at a LaTeX resume with a decent template than an MS Word one. Plus, with LaTeX you can use version control. Markdown doesn't give you the level of control most people want in their resume layout.

Edit: also, I agree that Computer Modern can come off as signaling (although, in quant finance, I found it to be a useful and positive signal). But using other fonts it doesn't have the same connotations and just looks a bit more polished.

Counter-opinion: your resume will likely be viewed as a PDF or printed on a piece of paper and taken into an interview session, so all that really matters it how it looks on a standard size page for the region in which you're applying.

I find most resumes are slurped into a database, losing all formatting, then rendered real shitty on greenhouse or something. I send a PDF and plaintext, but I prefer just sending plaintext usually.

That's if it gets viewed at all. I have sat with an interviewer correcting all the information that their ATS misread. Apple's ATS did not properly ingest my PDF LaTeX CV.

Having my resume in LaTeX offers a nice perk I haven't seen mentioned in the replies yet: under each section you can put a ton of different bullet points all commented out, and simply uncomment the most relevant ones for each job you're applying to.

I do the same. It is nice because I not only add a bullet point, but I can also keep in-line comments to remind me what the project was years down the road.

  %\item{Built internal dashboard for foo}
  % this was that awful project for <person> where they changed the requirements at the last second and yada yada...

Assuming the LaTeX resume would be shared with a recruiter as a pdf, is there really any difference? I could render the markdown with the Computer Modern font and many people would assume LaTeX.

> I could render the markdown with the Computer Modern font

You really shouldn't though. Computer Modern is a pretty ugly font.

At least use something like New Computer Modern if you really need a Scoth Roman font with maths.

As an aside, in 2021 Computer Modern looks really dated, especially for content that’s predominantly text rather than math. There are much better, more Unicode-friendly, and more typographically complete LaTeX fonts available.

Which fonts would you recommend?

Recently I've been using `mathpazo` which is Palatino extended with matching math symbols (if math is needed; if not, just use plain `palatino`).

Specifically, I use `mathpazo` with smallcaps and old-style figures enabled:

  \usepackage[sc,osf]{mathpazo}

(And yes, I realize that the original Palatino actually predates Computer Modern :D)

> If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX.

I would, and do, use TeX. Hell I'd use LaTeX for everything if I could.

Completely agreed. Except for the very very few cases where Word is better (e.g. printing out lots of pictures), I make a point of using LaTeX whenever possible. It’s just so much less painful than anything else.

This you?

https://github.com/bradrn/brassica/blob/master/README.md

Yes, that’s me. Why do you ask?

Doesn't look like LaTeX

OK, perhaps I should have added a qualifier to my previous statement: when making offline documents, I use LaTeX whenever possible. Generally speaking, PDFs in a web browser aren’t particularly nice to read, so LaTeX doesn’t work so well with online documents. As for your specific example: if the entire project is already on GitHub, of course the sensible decision is to use Markdown, since that’s GitHub’s native format. (And if Markdown isn’t enough, then I’ll fall back to LaTeX: e.g. documentation for [0].) For non-web documents, however, I always use LaTeX in all but a small number of situations.

[0] https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey

You're in the minority. I haven't seen any LaTeX readmes on github.

Does anybody really care what you use to generate your resume? LaTeX produces nice looking PDF output, is semantic (\cvitem{...}) and is modularized (if you're using OpenCV, you can change the layout with one line).

I've been meaning to use OpenCV, as I need to sharpen up my resume again (every 3 years). Do you have any resources you would recommend?

I've used OverLeaf [1] and a tweaked Shawn Pan's 'Resume for a Software Engineer' template [2] in the past.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com/

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/resume-template-for-...

There's a LaTeX curriculum vitae template called 'OpenCV'? That's brilliant.

I use LaTeX for mine, not because of some misguided sense of street cred, but just because I want it version controlled. I'm sure there are some nice pandoc templates for styling markdown CVs, but AwesomeCV for LaTeX CVs was what I came across, and has worked fine (roughly, it's abandonware that I've tweaked/fixed a bit but nobody's PRs get merged) since. My CV doesn't say 'proudly generated with heart emojis in LaTeX', or anything like that, it's just the tool I happened to use.

Edit: whoops, it's moderncv, not openvc.

Ha! I was about to ask if you meant you could changing your CV around with computer vision

Edit: Wait... OpenVC? ;)

I am building a LaTex resume. Why? Because I hate working on my resume and doing it with markup and other stuff makes it a bit more... bearable?

Yeah, I know, I am weird.

> If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX.

If it was for print then yes, I would. But a CV isn't technical information so I'm not sure what your point is here.

Have you considered that LaTeX might be the only typesetting tool I know? Why would I learn another piece of software just to typeset my CV?

Well I think a CV is technical information and I do know more than one typesetting tool.

You can skip doing all that formatting work yourself by using a good template. If you choose a 1-column layout, ATS probably won't bork it any more than any other PDF, too.

Here are a bunch of templates that range from decent-looking to beautiful: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv

I agree on your main point, in a weaker wording: 'LaTeX resumes/CVs rarely make sense', but not for the reason you gave, and I disagree with not using LaTeX in general for technical information.

The reason I think LaTeX resumes/CVs rarely make sense is that there are a number of HR departments that require them in MS Word format (often this is a SharePoint house and yes, I think that bizarre, but that is what I've found). LaTeX can be converted to Word doc, but in my experience always requires tweaking.

For sharing technical work, I think it depends on your audience.

A connected team with a decent wiki or document generation pipline authoring informal technical how-tos or status intended for the team only? Then some flavor of markdown (I prefer Creole) can make perfect sense.

Authoring anything for team external use should use a well defined community standard (rustdoc, rst, etc.) if what's being documented is specific to that community (Rust code, Python code, etc.).

Authoring anything of a more technical nature (papers, how-tos to be delivered to a client, CONOPS) should be authored in a pipeline that starts with a text based format, so that you can put it under good version control (opinionated, but SharePoint/Word do not count for that for me). I prefer LaTeX for that format. Some prefer Docbook, some DITA, and I've even seen a TOML version. This gets you version control, document section re-use, and fine-grained control over document layout.

Note I said should.

Some potential barriers to that are:

* Skillsets - the rest of the team does not know Docbook, DITA, or LaTeX and may be resistant to learn. This will make it a hard sell to management.

* Time - The project does not have the budget or scope to change how documentation is being done, according to management. In reality, this pipeline will save time in editing, and improve quality delivered to the client or end customer.

* NIH/NIMBY - Not Invented Here and it's more obstinate brother, Not In My Backyard. If your shop has always done it a certain way, then the team may be resistant to changing. Especially if the way it has been done is reflective of a Windows world (MS Word, MS PowerPoint). If management is part of this problem, move. Only partially kidding, but a good document pipeline will be a hard sell.

What do you do if you cannot sell a good document pipeline?

You could version control your MS Word documents in Git through conversion[1], but this means you might lose some of the little tweaks your manager did to improve quality/put their stamp on the doc.

Another option is that MS Word has track changes, and you may be stuck with a combination of track changes and SharePoint/Confluence versioning.

Another option, which I've never tried, is to unzip the MS .docx file into a folder (each .docx file is a zip of a bunch of files, most them text), git version control that folder, and re-zip it up when needed. Not sure how well git diffs will work in this situation though. My guess it probably not well, but maybe better than nothing.

[1] https://blog.front-matter.io/mfenner/using-microsoft-word-wi...

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