Hacker News Reader

Comment by legedemon | Hacker News Reader

I just checked your resume linked to from your website. To be blunt, you have mentioned too many unrelated things on your resume and it sends out the message that you are a jack of many trades.

My sincere advise would be to organize it so that someone can know what you are looking for and whether you'll be the right fit for them now rather than when their E-commerce company has a computational biology division. Since you already have had a year of Rails experience, why not highlight it there? (The world rails doesn't even show up on my tablet above the fold.)

View on HN

Jack of all trades isn't a bad thing per say. I've had many jobs (including my current one) where they were specifically looking for someone with a wide skill set - usually smaller companies.

Depends on the specific job your applying to. Some companies want specifically an iOS developer or only front-end websites. Others would love to hire 1 or 2 that can handle multiple languages, server setup and config, basic office setup (desktop pc's, printers)... So long as the job pay appropriately, a little server work breaks up the day to day programming grind.

A jack of all trades is great in a senior developer who's had time to learn one or more things "deep". In a junior its not much different from labeling someone as a bit of a dilettante.

Strive to be a T shaped developer eventually, but early in your career, go for being an I shaped developer.

I had one interview where this was mentioned as a bad thing and I didn't get the job, the next interview I got the job for exactly the same reason.

Both interviews were for the same kind of job.

My observation while looking at his resume: Why so much emphasis on functional programming? Most shops are much more OOP than functional, and making it seem like you care more about the intellectual aspects of programming than actually solving problems is not good. Employers don't care if you like functional programming if they aren't also huge functional programming people. HR managers sure as hell do not know what functional programming is.

Emphasis on functional programming because I made this resume when I was still working there, but wanted a job with more engineering and I like functional programming in particular. I will update my resume and even make a few resumes tailored to different roles later this week.

Indeed. Back when I was hiring for jobs requiring e.g. C++, that would have caught my eye and been a big positive, but going into any length about it will not help you with most people, and at best be a negative for typical HR units.

Mention it once in addition to or with the mention of Clojure so someone like me will notice, and only send the full exposition to companies and positions that are "actually solving problems" with FP; I seem to remember Wal-Mart (and you might like Bentonville, Arkansas after the cold of Rochester :-) and Amazon are using Clojure in production....

Well, to be honest I kind of am a jack of all trades ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But as I'm increasing my job search efforts, I'll end up making a few resumes tailored to different roles. So thank you for the advice, I certainly take it to heart and will act on it .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com