Career damaging self description | Hacker News Reader

Career damaging self description

itworld.com

15 pointsabennett6 comments

"I am a X programmer" (for arbitrary values of X), is not a good way to describe yourself in my opinion.

Am I the only one who thinks that video is a highly inefficient (linear) way to communicate such a collection of ideas?: I must invest 10 minutes to see what ideas are new (i.e., I can't scan down the bullet points of a table of contents; nor can my eyes scan back up to consider an earlier point).

[ After all: he wouldn't suggest I tax the time of a prospective employer by sending my resume as a video. ]

Having the video as an additional option/supplement to the text it WAY more respectful to the visitor to the page. IMHO.

After 3 minutes he's said:

  Don't describe yourself as an XXX programmer.
  Languages come and go.

Great insight - I switched off there, I can't be bothered spending another 7 minutes finding out another (extrapolating) at most two obvious points.

I'm saving myself a little time here by copying this text from a previous comment:

Warning: Auto-starting video

Finding which tab out of 30 tabs in 5 browser windows is annoyingly difficult.

Please - it's in the guidelines - put a warning in the title.

He sounds like an Irish Bob Ross. Let's put a nice happy little tree on your resume :)

The problem is that it's already too late to help the people that need to hear this advice.

I disagree. He has two points. The first - Dont call yourself a "Java programmer" (for example) because your job most likely will use more than Java and the self-description may contrain your career options. Instead use more general self-descriptions like "Database Expert" or "Web Developer". The second - Learn multiple languages to give yourself a flexible mental framework with which to solve problems.

I don't think it's too late for anyone to hear this advice. I thought it was quite helpful.

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