Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Have Done Them

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by bko on Sunday May 17, 2020 @08:12PM (#23216784)

Love the site. Read a few interviews. I agree with the comment about wishing the interviews were longer and more fleshed out.

Take for instance astronaut. Although it offered some nice antidotes, I still don't know what its like to be an astronaut.

From the interview:

> What was your biggest roadblock to becoming an astronaut, and how did you overcome it? ...Being able to be brave enough to actually apply. Too many people are too shy or afraid of failure. If there's something you want to do you just have to go for it.

That's a bit of a non-answer. It's like asking someone how they ran a 100 mile ultra-marathon, and they said "one step at a time!". I'd be more interested in the qualifications and skills they're looking for? What age are astronauts and where do they recruit from? How much time do you spend in space or otherwise away from your family. Are all the jobs clustered in one geographical location?

Also, I think you should make the About section feel a bit more personal. You linked to your personal twitter elsewhere but not in this page.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by perl4ever on Sunday May 17, 2020 @08:20PM (#23216828)

Well, how can you expect an astronaut to have a good answer to the biggest roadblock? You need to poll some people who tried but failed to become astronauts. They would know more.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by ganstyles on Monday May 18, 2020 @12:26AM (#23218332)

Sure, but when the astronaut application job posting recently came up, I was super excited. I would leave my technical job in a heartbeat to be an astronaut. But, the qualifications specifically needed specific things. Like, iirc, degrees in hard engineering disciplines. Otherwise it was a clear "No." I would expect them to mention things like really, really needing a hard engineering masters (at least, if not PhD) to even not get weeded out at resume review stage.

Also, I know two astronauts relatively well and they say the same thing when the topic has come up. One took a non traditional approach to being an astronaut, applying many times over years, but still had a hard science advanced degree. It's literally a requirement in the application.

To my chagrin, I will never be an astronaut.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by ISL on Monday May 18, 2020 @01:30AM (#23218723)

Crista McAuliffe was a social-studies teacher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_McAuliffe

Where there is a will, sometimes there is a way.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by john_minsk on Monday May 18, 2020 @03:20AM (#23219325)

>> NASA wanted to find an "ordinary person," a gifted teacher who could communicate with students while in orbit.

So i guess maybe some programs like this will appear in the future...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by craftinator on Sunday May 17, 2020 @11:28PM (#23218014)

Failure is the best teacher, in that things working out the way you want them to almost always has a lower probability than the other way around (i.e. you're very good at basketball, so you should have a good chance of being in the NBA right?) This is why easy success stories are so demoralizing to people; they are hearing about the few who got lucky vs the countless ones who did everything they could to succeed but it just didn't work out.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by MaxBarraclough on Monday May 18, 2020 @08:46AM (#23221618)

How does that relate to failure is the best teacher?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by craftinator on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @07:47PM (#23241713)

Because amazing success stories are most likely due to chance, not action. This means that the people who succeeded, especially without first failing a large number of times (like applying to be an astronaut or NBA player; you get one, maybe two chances), haven't learned much about how to accomplish those tasks.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by random32840 on Monday May 18, 2020 @04:47AM (#23219972)

I don't think the problem is who they polled. The problem is that they're fishing out two-sentence platitudes that are not useful.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by chrisseaton on Sunday May 17, 2020 @10:29PM (#23217603)

Huh interesting. You could have a website where for each job people want you find someone who failed at each point along the way to getting it, so you can know what to avoid doing yourself.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by quickthrower2 on Monday May 18, 2020 @05:06AM (#23220103)

Anecdotes I think is the word you were looking for

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Career Fair – Learn about Jobs by People Who Hav... by brailsafe on Monday May 18, 2020 @05:39AM (#23220308)

Antidotes to chaos

[ Parent | on HN ]