Marco Arment's 2006 Resume [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Marco Arment's 2006 Resume [pdf]

marco.org

10 pointsmichaelrbock11 comments

I hired Marco for his first job (at Vivisimo which I co-founded). He didn't do particularly well (I don't think being a regular employee fits him) but he did work on some things that he ended up leveraging later on at Tumblr and for Instapaper. He actually left because his girlfriend wanted to move to NY. He had a low GPA in college and we hired him because he did a lot of things outside college (like writing his own games) and that impressed us.

I would have never guessed that he would do so well after leaving and that let's me wonder how many Marcos there are out there doing average jobs in average companies. Out of 200 employees that we hired before being acquired by IBM more than a dozen went on to create their own companies - none yet as successful as Marco's.

This is interesting background, but you should reconsider revealing this kind of information about him publicly unless you've got his permission. It's really none of our business what his GPA was or whether he did well at his first job.

Good point. I hope he won't mind. I think it makes his story the more remarkable (and an example to follow for many other people).

Marco has publicly said several times he had a low GPA in college. If I recall correctly it's because he hated doing homework.

This is the short blurb that went along with his sharing it today: http://www.marco.org/2013/06/01/my-2006-resume

I feel kind of gross for creeping on his old resume, but the idea of having "jobs@mydomain.com" as an e-mail address is a really good one I hadn't thought to do before.

I used <yourcompanynamehere>@hirevito.com for the longest time, with hirevito.com being a job/resume-specific domain (my personal domains are vi.to and vitor.io).

Spammy recruiters would often send it to that literal address, "yourcompanynamehere@", which garnered them an immediate rejection for a lack of attention to detail.

Otherwise, it necessitated excessive customization and triple-checking of every resume I sent out to make sure I didn't goof on the mailto. It wasn't worth it.

I eventually moved to specific technologies or skill sets, e.g. drupal@, ux@, and that seemed to be lower maintenance.

Why does this guy get so much traction on here?

1. He makes honest, (edit: if pretentious) user-focused software.

2. He's very successful.

3. He has strong opinions.

Yup. Look at his work ex with VS, DX3D, C# and his visceral hate towards Microsoft after getting successful is telling. I get it, he is a developer who has to be in know of all the technologies but maybe he developed those strong opinions after getting successful, and especially after looking at his former boss's comment that he was average at Vivisimo and shined afterwards at Tumblr etc. I can respect everything he has done and his posts/opinions, but finding his resume on here I was compelled to comment.

I'd guess it's because he's successful, well spoken, and opinionated. His opinions are controversial enough to spark heated discussions, without alienating too many of us.

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