Of course, it might happen that they'd hire contributors, as you say. I'd say this is incredibly rare (but does happen). Usually, from my experience, this happens when the company wants to essentially "acquire" the code (and sometimes, the contributor is hired as a contractor for a couple months).
But it may contribute to you getting an interview in the first place, no?
A few years ago I was offered a job explicitly because I had a github account where I hosted a public project that used a framework.
Later, I was the recruiter in a few hiring rounds, and public source code repos was my primary source of data to assess q candidate. If a candidate had shit code in their repos, they'd be rejected. By "shit code" I mean a candidate for a senior software engineer for a C++ project showed up his GitHub project as his C++ portfolio, and all he had for show was a project that didn't even used include guards.
It was a bundle of declarations that included duplicate definitions on each source file. The candialdate then expected stuff to remain consistent by updating all declarations.
If you intentionally put up your GitHub page in your resume and all you have is "incomplete and unpolished exploratory projects", that's how you're choosing to present yourself.
Also, the degree of "unpolished ness" actually attests to the skillet you bring to the table. If the "exploratory projects" you choose to showcase as your portfolio are ungodly messes, you should not be surprised they reflect poorly on you.
> It's surprising that you would take pride in using this as a basis to disqualify.
I know for a fact that public GitHub repositories explicitly presented by candidates as their technical portfolio is an accurate reflection of their skillet. I am certain of this fact because I never used personal source code repos to exclude candidates but to guide the interview, and each and every single candidate I interviewed that published crap in their portfolio was lacking absolute basic competencies in the domain they showcased.
Do you have any data to refute this?
IMO this is the real problem - and it comes through in your blog posts. It's very risky to hire someone who can't be a cog, you need a lot of social proof that they're worth the risk.
Edit: From what others wrote about about your blogs, I think your ascertion that your personal views shouldn't pose a proboem are wrong. By that I don't mean having them is wrong, but being as outspoken about, lets put it mildly, potentionally controversial opinions in a borderline aggressive way is the problem. It would be an equal problem if we talked veganism as another, potentionally bad, example. Nobody wants to be called out by their co-worker during lunch for having a steak everytime. And nobody wants to talk about why a co-worker feels insulted for not being ablento bring a gun to the workplace.
Edit 2: Paul Graham has one of his earlier articles that seems relevant: the one about keeping a low public profile. Is more relevant than ever, the more said profile deviates from the mainstream the more it can become a problem. GP is great example for this.
> "Why can't I get a job?"
> - man with 30ft pole behind them with a red flag hoisted on it
There might be people outside of the conference targeting attendees? That is the talk of someone who walks around life haunted by fear.
https://staffeng.com/book has a list of different types of staff+ roles that could maybe fit.
I'm Australian based, probably similar elsewhere.
This would be a problem for me when hiring too (to be frank - hard pass due to above, and no amount of git code beauty would change that).
Collaboration, communication, team work are much more important long term in bigger teams. Willingness to help team/project even though sometimes bureaucracy might be Kafka-esque. Yes we are all cogs in big machine, so what? It takes 2 seconds to realize that for each of us. We still do the work, its work for christ sake, we pay the bills, vacations and go back to our families just like everybody else.
I personally think I'm just not a good for anywhere.
If you don't want to do the things that would qualify you for the available jobs, that's not because your technical posts wculdn't make you stand out, positively, it's because you're choosing not to!
I'm not so sure it would work. By the time I thought about it, I had already gone viral on HN and the personal attacks had started.
You can also ask dang to delete some of your posts on HN if it helps disassociate your name from discussions like these (though I doubt most people would think to look you up on HN based on a name)
But I'm still going to carry when I feel I need to.
Maybe be a little careful with the conspiracy theories, but I am quite done with the corporate-friendly personas we are pushing in our tech world.
I wanted to write a couple posts about anarchism on my personal blog, nothing crazy, and kept being concerned it might drive off a potential recruiter. Who the hell cares, a company where I cannot have a touch of personality is not a place I want to work at either.
Must be because I learned this job in the early 2000s, when sysadmins were wearing black shirts and listening to death metal, and the CEO stayed well away from that office, not the shirt-wearing, well-trimmed DevOps you see at conferences these days.
The only potentially "controversial" idea (as in, corp might not like it but will have to deal with it) that is still accepted in tech is being trans or a furry. I have no issue with either, mind you, just pointing out that anything else is a no-no.
We all have our quirks, and we should celebrate them. I know your blog, I can't say I understand where you're coming from or that I relate very much with your persona, but I appreciate that you're able to stand out as your own, and I'm able to recognise you among the masses.
But in many cases, outside the fight for gender identity freedom, this is not possible in the world of modern social media, where you're always one step from being lynched by a mob because you dared go against the grain. The Twitterverse is the reason we're all sterile clones of each other, dividing everybody into a us vs them culture battle. That's too much nonsense for me.
Thanks for the level headed conversation
I generally don't care about a colleague's politics (as long as they don't constantly bring it out in work-related conversations), but not sure I want to work with someone who is going to be a dick about getting vaccinated or wearing a mask during a pandemic.
Beyond that, the guy won't patronize Haagen Dazs because they support BLM (which he believes to be a "terrorist organization"), and won't patronize Ben & Jerry's because they once tweeted that the phenomenon of police killings of black people is rooted in white supremacy.
Just looking at that list would make me gag at the idea of hiring this person, and I suspect I'm not alone by a long shot. Start reading stuff on his blog and... it gets worse.
I don't think this is about having a "corporate friendly" online persona... it's just about not being kinda a shitty person.
If it's important to you then you should. There are places that allow/encourage people to be individuals.
>The only potentially "controversial" idea (as in, corp might not like it but will have to deal with it) that is still accepted in tech is being trans or a furry. I have no issue with either, mind you, just pointing out that anything else is a no-no.
That said be careful what you write and how you phrase it because it's one thing to have an opinion, and another to make a statement like that.
That's the bloody point. Fuck having to walk on eggshells, especially when I made it quite clear I have no issues with that. I had to be quite careful with the wording, and I know exactly this opens me to be attacked and pointed out as a bigot because I equated gender identity struggles with identity in general. How dare I.
We're all walking on eggshells and get quickly silenced if we even dare question it. I do not wish the Internet to operate under mob rule.
The things you say in public could be heard by someone and those someones have the gall to form an opinion of you you don't like -- some may even confront you about it.
Disagreement, unemployability, hostility, these are among the prices we pay for saying things in public places such as the internet. You can decide to pay the price and maybe turn it into a fruitful discussion (granted, unlikely on the internet) or you can shut up and seethe with anger for "being silenced".
> especially when I made it quite clear I have no issues with that.
No, you didn't. You pretty much said "just saying" as though that absolves you of what you actually said [0].
[0] https://www.npr.org/2010/12/18/132160770/its-rude-its-crude-...
People increasingly don't even read the posts before the go off on ideological rants and false accusations.
Eh? The comment I replied to said `The only potentially "controversial" idea (as in, corp might not like it but will have to deal with it) that is still accepted in tech is being trans or a furry. I have no issue with either, mind you, just pointing out that anything else is a no-no.`
The discussion is around identity, and mentioning that these days only gender identity is a corporate-acceptable struggle. I claim that identity in general should be celebrated. I shan't be afraid to say, on my blog I'm an anarchist, or, for argument's sake, I'm a satanist, I am trans, I vote Trump, Google is a shitty company, or Star Wars is a terrible franchise.
No, you don't get to do that on any topic. If you write a blog post on a programming language feature, and in the middle of your post decide to slip in a note about your feelings on the middle east conflict, web3/crypto or your political opinions, expect people to talk about that. You decided it was important enough to mention in your post, so it's up for discussion.
> and just a way to entrap me.
Nah, you don't get "woe is me" card if you shoehorn in a dog whistle and get called out on it.
> I shan't be afraid to say, on my blog I'm an anarchist, or, for argument's sake, I'm a satanist, I am trans, I vote Trump, Google is a shitty company, or Star Wars is a terrible franchise.
Do that. But don't be surprised if people treat your words equally.
If you can't keep your message on-point, that's a you problem, not an everyone else problem.
This is why social media is shit today. It's full of people unable to sustain intelligent discussion, so they try to find hidden meaning behind someone else's words.
You see a dog whistle, I see a person that gets off doing online witch hunts, instead of simply knowing how to disagree. If you have to resort to the personal attack, it's quite obvious there is no intelligent argument to be had here.
This is not Twitter. Good day.
You don’t want to live in a world where people won’t hire you because they don’t like you? You’re in for a rough ride.
Actually my gender and race are much more "me" than my blog, cause I might change my opinions and my blog no longer reflects my internal "states".
You can’t discriminate based on sex or race, you can based on personality.
1. You probably don't have many friends or
2. Your friends are not very diverse
Outside, in the real world, I can sit and have a very pleasant conversation on TV shows or Lisp interpreters with someone with terrible ideas or belief which are inconsequential to the matter at hand and are not part of the conversation. I can sit for a beer with childhood acquaintances that I know are racist, bigots or generally idiots, because we're talking about something else than the things I know we don't see eye to eye. And that's fine.
It is frightening that we're forgetting how real people outside the Internet are, behave and can get along in all their complexity.
Where did I say that?
> Outside, in the real world, I can sit and have a very pleasant conversation on TV shows or Lisp interpreters with someone with terrible ideas or belief which are inconsequential to the matter at hand and are not part of the conversation. I can sit for a beer with childhood acquaintances that I know are racist, bigots or generally idiots, because we're talking about something else than the things I know we don't see eye to eye. And that's fine.
Good for you. We're multinational company with thousands of employees, I personally been witness to situations where incompatibility in views caused issues during work. In my free time, with my childhood acquaintances I can talk about anything, during work with my colleagues I want to have productive workday - not arguing about current flavor of racism or whoever-knows-what's opinions about anarchy.
Again I know it's not black and white and everyone has different red lines. If someone treats killing baby mammals as their favorite form of entertainment I probably can't work with them.
My original post was refuting claims that a blog and public code could get you hired.
I know that companies will see me as not a good fit. That's a good thing for both of us because I've come to realize that I'm not a good fit for a sterile office environment.
A blog can get you hired.
Your blog will not.
I know if I was hiring for something and found that post, that'd be an instant no-hire from me.
People boycott things all the time for all kinds of reasons. Some people boycott Israeli businesses due to the Israel/Palestine conflict, other people boycott MyPillow, and others boycott Chik-Fil-A, or more recently Budweiser. The outrage here on HN is a bit annoying, considering this used to be a fairly balanced platform.
As a consumer, boycotting a business is basically the only recourse for whatever grievance (justified or not) you may have which happens to be outside the purview of the law. Or is boycotting not petty only when your tribe does it?
But if many people think you are being petty/bonkers/anti-something-they-care-about based on why you are boycotting particular businesses, that might cause you some trouble.
> Or is boycotting not petty only when your tribe does it?
There are certainly some boycotts I don't participate in, but respect the decision of those who do.
Boycotting is petty when people think it's petty (pettiness is an opinion, not an intrinsic property of something). If you want to talk about "tribes", sure, maybe a particular "tribe" thinks some particular boycott is petty. That's life.
I don't care how good of a C whiz this person is, if I see that crap associated with an applicant their application is going straight to the incinerator. Even if I had no problem hiring bad, asshole human beings, this guy is a legal liability.
People really don't read my blog posts very well.
You're the one that isn't getting hired. Whether you recognize your error or not, the people looking to hire do. There's content in your posts that if they were in a company slack message would be a major liability. Most companies don't believe in breaking the law.
The moderation of lobste.rs is nowhere near as even-handed as HN, as his example (and many others) demonstrates.
Beyond being an ethically bad and bigoted person, this guy would bring state and federal liability to the company from the first day on the job. I don't care if he disagrees, this isn't a matter up for discussion, I will not break the law for you.
I'd suggest separate technical/non-technical blogs and only referring people to the first. I'm mostly thinking of all the blog posts that explicitly point to the disclaimer..
You don't have to hide the personal blog but this is probably a bit much for sites you point employers at.
I've come to expect it.
Notice that I never wondered why companies don't hire me. I merely said they don't. I know I'm not a good fit in a sterile work environment.
Also pretty sure most of the people working on bare metal are not LGBT or furries. Certainly some are, but... what a weird thing to assert.
> Got another programming job. Got fired for "performance." I think the reason wasn’t good, but I also have a hard time building a theory of mind, which means I can’t read code written by others.
If you can't read code written by others, that's going to be a big concern for companies that require you to read and modify other people's code.
Perhaps you need to be a contractor, not an employee.
Unfortunately, I'd say a key skill for a contractor is probably reading code written by others because - at least in my experience - you're 90% of the time coming in to clean up or maintain an old mess someone else has made.
https://gavinhoward.com/2023/04/rust-is-dead-to-me/
> Rust the language is dead to me.
> why?
> Because, quite literally, the Rust Foundation wants to make people like me unwelcome in any Rust event, not just official ones.
> Don’t believe me?
> Look at the draft Rust Trademark Policy that the Rust Foundation is asking for comments on and go to page 12:
> > We will consider requests to use the Marks on a case by case basis, but at a minimum, would expect events and conferences using the Marks to…prohibit the carrying of firearms…
> I have a concealed carry permit. I have firearms and other weapons. I know how to use them, and I will use them in defense of my wife and myself.
> And you can bet I carry them into places I consider dangerous if it is legal to.
I bet there are people out there outside the US who think that you should protect your safety in a boring computer conference, but you won't ever hear about it. This notion is too fringe and people won't dare say it.
I think you missed my previous point. Angry men with guns being allowed into a boring computer conference (or anywhere else for that matter) is the reason people think they need to protect their own safety in the first place.
Can just imagine a Rust conference, and an argument breaks out over memory management, one guy starts yelling about 'borrowing', starts shooting, someone else yells "you can take my pointers out of my dead cold hands", starts shooting. Pandemonium.
I am personal'y of the opinion that brands play it too safe in general and people aren't stupid and know that just because a brand happened to be near something bad doesn't mean the brand is responsible and therefore bad, but apparently brands don't agree and they're the ones calling the shots on where they're displayed.
I don't think this follows. Historically speaking, most mass shootings have occurred at locations that specifically disallow firearms, making them "soft targets" where the cowardly attacker will not have anyone fight back. It doesn't seem logically consistent to assume that this policy item has the effect you are stating.
Most places with large crowds disallow firearms, and most mass shootings occur at places with crowds. You're confusing correlation with causation.
HN never change please.
Frankly, I think if people won't hire because of a post like this, then the interviewers are the one contributing to the problem.
Totally disagree. For the vast majority of software dev jobs (like 98% of them), you just want someone who shows up and does the work without making much of a fuss. People who openly demonstrate that they are difficult to work with are freely signaling "do not hire me, I will make your life much harder"
Why would you hire someone like that? You'd much rather have someone who is 50% as skilled but gets along with everyone and doesn't make other's lives harder because of their personality
For the vast majority of people who post stuff like that on their blog, they show up and do the work without making much of a fuss.
I know because I've worked with several of them.
And you'd have no problem with your coworkers always keeping a gun on them? This seems like a recipe for a workplace incident
But sure, the workplace will usually have a policy about guns, and that's more an HR problem than a problem for me as an interviewer. And I'd put the burden on him to enquire about that aspect.
But (depending on where you live) you'd also be surprised how many coworkers carry guns with them. At one company I was shocked. HR put a policy prohibiting concealed carry, and damn near 80% of my team took serious issue with it. It felt like I had accidentally walked into an NRA meeting or something. There were never any issues, and we tended to get into some heated arguments at that place. Turns out most gun carriers recognize and respect the gun and don't just pull it out and start shooting people every time they get offended.
Get over it, go burn a witch somewhere else in a country that doesn’t have the legal rights to it.
If you can't read code by written by others, being a (software) contractor is probably the worst job you could have. Now you need to read new code at every new client you start at.
And most times it's code that you really don't enjoy reading because it was dragged up from the slurry pits in Beelzebub's own septic tank and mangled over the years into a horrific totem, a paean to insanity, screeching out its perverted agonies the only way it knows how - through JIRA and Kanban boards containing decade-old bugs that you are asked, nay expected, to fix in your first week.
Similarly I've worked for someone who sets up a continuos integration systems.
There are contracting jobs that don't require you to read the code of others.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Judging by your description and comment you certainly stand out, but is that enough to get a job? I can't tell unless I have an interview with you.
I am not a good fit for companies, and I know it.
I was just refuting the article.
I wonder if he's going to listen to the advice and present as more milquetoast when using his real name, or double down.
I mean I have some pretty fringe beliefs too (mainly on the strongly anti-capitalist, progressive side of things). I'm not stupid enough to post those ideas publicly because they're far more likely to hurt my chances of employment than to help them.
Well, yeah, but I'm European, which means I'm practically a Communist ;) I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt a bit, because "dude, tone it down a bit" is easier to swallow that "everything you believe is wrong".
But it's a good thing that companies find this out because I'm not a good fit for a sterile work environment.
My original post was not asking why; it was refuting the article that said it was a good thing in its face.
Not that I necessarily agree with that, but how are you refuting it?
The posts that make you stand out the most don't really demonstrate creativity, nor do they make you stand out in a positive way (to most employers; perhaps not to any employers, since you're so publicly opinionated on a variety of things that are largely unrelated and yet also largely unaligned with the majority of tech workers)
I'm not refuting that you have technical writing that could make you stand out in a positive way, but it's overshadowed by all the other stuff.
It's like if someone posted "You only have to write one operating system from scratch to stand out as a candidate", and then Terry Davis (author of TempleOS) comes in and says "not true, I wrote an operating system and no one will hire me"
Well sure, but if you look at the comments in the source code for that or any of his writing or videos, they're riddled with racial slurs.
Obviously the OS itself is impressive, but no one wants to hire a liability
The article had an implicit bent that standing out was good. When you're like me, it's not. That's what I was refuting.
The author is clearly talking about blogging to demonstrate expertise and creativity in the technical domain, in order to stand out positively.
The author did not make the claim that ranting about your fringe opinions online will make you stand out positively. In fact, they didn't mention the impact that would have at all.
You are fighting a straw man.
> When you're like me, it's not
It has nothing to do with being like you. You're not standing out positively because you're choosing to post things that make you stand out negatively, and the author made no claim about how that would impact you as a candidate.
To offer an extreme example, if someone were to put up a website that advocates for child cannibalism, and then didn't get a tech job as a result, I don't think it'd be credible for them to say that their website refutes this article's point.
As an aside, your comment that any work environment that might object to your views must be "sterile" is yet another piece of supporting evidence for why you might have trouble finding a job.
All while striving for positions of power that they keep and deny to those whom they pretend to represent.
They do not work well with other people, they dictate, intimidate and eschew real work.
Yet they are hired. The irony is that I agree with several of their positions, but make no mistake. They are horrible people who would march under any flag if expedient.
I know I didn't achieve that; certainly some amount of judgment came through, but ultimately I'm fine with that. Life goes on, etc.
For the record, your post comes off as a bit angry too! But I'll try to read it as if you were writing it with feelings of weary disappointment.
But then I got to the Lobster post and him 'overcoming gender dysphoria', and it's just sad
My post was not wondering why I wasn't getting hired; it was a refutation of the article saying that blogs were all good.
Sometimes you can stand out in a bad way (in other people's minds).
I'm okay with this because I'm not a good fit for sterile office work.
> Start a blog. Post an interesting technical article to it once or twice a year—something you’ve learned, or a bug you’ve fixed, or a problem you’ve solved. After a few years stop bothering entirely, but leave the blog online somewhere.
That's all it says about starting a blog. It doesn't say blogging about any topic is good. It very much doesn't say posting about social and political issues is good. It just says that posting a couple times a year about technical topics is good.
I thought this was the progressive opinion? Gender dysphoria is a mental illness and transitioning is the treatment. What’s the accepted view now?
Certainly transitioning is one way (and a seemingly very successful one) at dealing with gender dysphoria. Whether or not accepted psychological practice would call that situation "a cure for a mental illness" is something I don't know.
I work for an established (perhaps legacy) tech company. While people with such views aren't the norm, we have quite a few of them, and we all get along quite well. The only thing that would give pause in the list above are the transphobic comments.
But I do believe that, even for an employer who might by sympathetic to some of this person's views, many will not want to take a chance dealing with someone who might be a liability in the workplace in various ways due to those views. Certainly writings on one's blog aren't a perfect indication, but I think most hiring managers would prefer people who keep their more extreme views under their hat. Whether or not this is fair is besides the point; I do believe this is the reality.
For the record, I think many companies would have the same reaction to someone who posts angry-sounding leftist rhetoric on their website. But I do expect many are more tolerant of that than angry-sounding right-wing rhetoric.
Beyond that, even without all the social and political views, I think things like "I'll only work in C" and "I'm bad at understanding other people's code" alone would disqualify a candidate for most jobs.
I read a couple of the posts; I can't comment on the demographics or beliefs of the people recruiting in the location you are looking, but I suspect they are not as uniform as you imply - and even those who share them may not share also your penchant for mixing the professional with cultural evangelism - especially if they have responsibility for team cohesion and company reputation.
I was just refuting the article.
> Labor Code section 1101 prohibits an employer from preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or preventing employees from becoming candidates for public office.
Sure it does. It may suck from a perspective of a candidate, but it’s a fair business position to value cohesion in a team.
I can't comment on other jurisdictions, but the United States has a section of legislation called the Civil Rights Act Title VII[1] codifying that discrimination on the basis of a variety of factors (age included) is actually not (legally) right.
I think this is hard to enforce in practice, but just to be clear -- it's not (technically) "right" to be ageist in one's hiring practices in the US.
[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/centers-offices/civil-rig...
I lost the motivation to continue.
"If I lose, I will run for Senate of the United States against Mitt Romney in 2024. I will not go away."
"And if I lose, I will then run for President of the United States in 2028 since that is the first year I will be eligible. I will not go away."
This might reflect poorly on you in the eyes of an employer wondering if you were distracted by political priorities, and/or not seeing it through? Could explain the job fortunes.
Let's just say that there was an external reason why I lost motivation that I could tell a potential employer, and they would understand. I won't repeat it on HN though.
In reality, I know why I'm not getting a job. I'll not a good fit for sterile office work. And that's okay for both me and companies; their are right to avoid hiring me.
I'm mid-40s and have worked for myself since my late teens. I recently realised that I'm likely unemployable in a traditional office sense, and so will need to make everything work off my own back until retirement. Things are good now, but prospects and perceptions change quickly with age, depending on your field.
In my experience, not a single employer cares about documentation.
I have a blog with 170-ish posts. About half are technical. Three or four have gone viral on HN.
The other half are personal, but I live in a place where people generally share the same values, so those other posts shouldn't be a problem.
I've got a personal project. It's used in production and ships as part of the base install with FreeBSD and Mac OSX.
It demonstrates high proficiency with C. It demonstrates careful work with every function documented in Doxygen comments and a development manual entirely designed to raise the bus factor to infinity. It also shows I've got fuzzing chops.
I have other code. It's not complete, but I've got hundreds or thousands of hours in it, and it's to the same quality.
And I can't get a job.