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alanpage

498 karma · joined October 26, 2011

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alanpage··on Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
If you must apply via online job applications, definitely change your resume to include as many of the keywords in the job description as you can, while still being truthful. If you don't, the first-level automated filtering will screen you out of the group moving on to the HR department. This is a huge amount of work, but even a little bit of an edge can help.

That said, DON'T go through online applications if you can avoid it. Many of the jobs I (and others around me) have gotten are through their personal network.

Develop your personal network now. Question: When is the best time to plant a tree if you want to enjoy it? Answer: 20 years ago. When is the second best time to plant a tree? Today.

1. Connect to everyone you know personally or have ever worked with on LinkedIn, and use the "Send a note" function to give them a reason to remember you, and say you'd like to add them to your network. Once you've got a decent number of connections (at least a few hundred?), post a "looking for work" type of message with your skills, experience, and interests. Be sincere and not "network-y". Do it with the intention that they might be able to help you now, but you may be able to help them in the future.

2. Reach out to friends and coworkers that you had a closer relationship with, and let them know that you're looking for work in a particular area or field, and do they know of anything available (or companies that fit your area). Friends and ex-coworkers are the best because they can get you right into the HR department or the hiring manager.

3. Do not discount the many people on LinkedIn who currently or recently worked at a company that you are considering applying to (but that you don't know). Sign up for the paid LinkedIn service for a month, and use the ability of paid users to email anyone, to reach out to people who might be in the department of the company that you are looking at. You'd be amazed what information or help you can get from total strangers, just by sending them a nice note explaining that you're looking at the company/department and would like to speak to them for a few minutes to get an idea of the company culture. This is scary for many people (a younger myself included), but I've done it and it works. Most people will give you a few minutes to talk to you. And you could get valuable information about the team/department/manager, that could help you present the side of you that works best in their culture (laid back, hard-charging, early-risers, dog-friendly, tabs not spaces, etc.).

Good luck with the search!

alanpage··on AI Canon
And why should we trust their judgement about anything, after they put money into Adam Neuman's new company (after the WeWork debacle)?

CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/a16z-to-invest-in-adam-neuma...

alanpage··on Introduction to Client-Side Frameworks
Agreed! I spent a lot of time evaluating frameworks a year ago, and this article sums up much of my research. I had to mention it, in case it hadn't been covered here on HN.
alanpage··on A new factor in an uneasy moment: Unidentified law enforcement officers
In the U.S. where I am, officers have a "badge number", literally on their metallic badge affixed to their uniform. These are hard enough to read during a non-confrontational exchange, but become useless in a fast moving, chaotic situation, which we're seeing a lot during this time.

It would make sense to have these badge numbers in larger characters on the front and/or back of the uniform, whether they are in riot gear or just their day-to-day uniform.

alanpage··on 35 Year-Old C64 Easter Egg Hidden on Vinyl [video]
Radiohead's "OK Computer" box set contained a mix tape with ancient computer code on it, in much the same way:

https://ledgernote.com/blog/interesting/radioheads-secret-co...

alanpage··on We are clueless about how long things should take
As a former developer, and as a manager of development teams, I feel that engineers tend to underestimate how long a task or a project will take them. This is due to several factors, including good developers having big egos about their capabilities, and with them focusing only on the straightforward solution, without giving credit to the inevitable (and expensive) edge cases.

My formula for getting a better estimate from engineers (call it "padding" if you wish), is to take their estimate, double it, and then round up to the next largest time unit.

For example, if they say a task will take 3 hours, I double it to 6 hours, then round up to a full day. If they estimate it at 2 days, I double it to 4 days, then round up to a full week.

This sounds like a joke, but I've found that in the real world, these types of estimates are closer to what ends up happening.

alanpage··on Town in Iceland Paints 3D Zebra Crosswalk to Slow Down Speeding Cars
This is a cool optical illusion, but it's deceptive at best to actual drivers. I could see it causing rear-end collisions when drivers first encounter them.

And what about cars coming from the opposite direction? They'll see something that they won't recognize at all as a crosswalk, raised or not.

alanpage··on Ask HN: Stuck with an unpronounceable product name
Do the rebranding now, before you get so big that you have to spend HUGE sums of money to get people to understand the pronunciation.

Don't be Rakuten, who spent millions on a Super Bowl commercial, and gave away thousands in stacks of cash, to get people to understand it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6sxz4vuxRg

alanpage··on Raspberry Pi Pet Detector Camera Using Python, TensorFlow, and Twilio [video]
Cool twist on an old problem.

Here are two others, using different tech to automatically open the door for the pet.

Facial recognition: https://www.hackster.io/windowsiot/cat-door-with-pet-recogni...

Pattern recognition: https://hackaday.com/2010/05/14/cat-door-unlocks-via-facial-...

alanpage··on Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?
Test your system (and your room) with this audio quality quiz, comparing lossless audio with several compressed bit rate streams [1]. With my 50-year old ears, and an outboard DAC/amp and audiophile magnetic planar headphones, I could only score 50%.

That said, switching between Spotify and Tidal on the same track, I hear a pretty big difference. The lossless music has a depth that just isn't there on the compressed streams

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...

alanpage··on Ask HN: Where can I find high-end stock images for a website?
SVG icons: https://feathericons.com/
alanpage··on The Document Which Used to Be Called the MIT Lockpicking Guide (1992)
The text is probably the output from an OCR program that was run on a printed copy of the test, and the user didn't scan the output for the inevitable errors that these programs produce.
alanpage··on Console.mihai();
Wow. Mihai's story is at once humbling and inspiring.

As a web developer who has used the fruits of his hard work in Firefox, I will remember him when I think that my job or life is difficult. I really have nothing to complain about.