0:06

It takes more than a virtual stack of

0:08

unread PDFs to be a great software

0:10

engineer. This is episode 444 of the

0:13

Soft Skills Engineering podcast, where I'm your

0:15

host, James and Dance. I'm your host,

0:17

Dave Smith. Soft Skills Engineering is a

0:19

weekly advice show about all the non-technical

0:21

things that go into the technical field

0:23

of software development. Like, if you're like

0:25

me, you have the physical stack of

0:27

books, and then I have my virtual

0:29

stack of PDFs. They're both are kind

0:31

of like right only. the stacks yes

0:33

there's a push method but not a

0:35

pop method is what you're saying yeah

0:37

yeah surely someday I'll read attention is

0:40

all you need yeah this white okay

0:42

that's like a foundational paper in in

0:44

llms and yeah by the time it's

0:46

been completely obsolete that's when you'll get

0:49

around to that's when you'll throw it

0:51

away it's like wanting to read like

0:53

the paper about the double slit experiment

0:56

or something just it feels like like

0:58

like yeah it's probably important I

1:00

guess I guess I don't know Also,

1:02

I probably wouldn't understand it

1:04

because it's that one might

1:06

be in German and attention

1:08

is all you need is probably

1:11

in like math It's in math.

1:13

Yeah There's lots of Lots of

1:15

epsilons in there. Oh, yeah many

1:17

big big sigmas Yes Seven

1:19

sigmas even more Dave do

1:21

you want to thank our

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patrons? Yes, I do we

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have a one-time shout-out four

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toy-boat, toy-boat, toy-boat,

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toy-boat, toy-boat, toy-boat,

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toy-boat, toy-boat,

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toy-boat, toy-boat,

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get me. The tongue twister

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did ask. got a

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listener update here. They say still listening.

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2024! And Braden Keynes, John Grant, Brittany

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to join this illustrious crew, Dave Laph.

3:14

Now, I hear you like movies and

3:17

volume Time Travel, Los Crono Cream it

3:19

is a great one, don't watch the

3:21

trailer, it's not good, Cody, sah. Every

3:24

week, it just gets better. Man, thank

3:26

you so much everyone who supports the

3:28

show at the level where we shot

3:31

you out every week and who go

3:33

farther to change your name on. Patreon

3:35

to be something that just warms my

3:37

heart. It's so good. Shall I read

3:40

our first question? I was hoping you

3:42

would. Okay, this is from a listener

3:44

named Martin. Who says, after a decade

3:47

as a senior front-end engineer and company

3:49

stuck in legacy ways of working, paying

3:51

lip service to true agility while clinging

3:54

to control heavy waterfall practices, I'm frustrated

3:56

and exhausted by meetings and largely apathetic

3:58

outsourced teams who don't match my enthusiasm

4:01

for product thinking or improving things. It

4:03

seems allowed and normalized everywhere I go.

4:05

How can I escape this cycle of

4:07

big tech, unfulfilled as an engineer and

4:10

find a team with strong product engineering

4:12

culture, where I can do high-impact work?

4:14

with similarly empowered teams. Thank you and

4:17

sorry if this is a bit verbose.

4:19

Martin. Martin, that wasn't verbose at all.

4:21

It was perfect. It was a perfect

4:24

level of verbose. Eloquent. Yes, concise. It's

4:26

the kind of eloquence that you can

4:28

tell comes from like seething rage. You're

4:30

like, I'm gonna just slam. I don't

4:33

know, you know how those those rage

4:35

emails you write sometimes are just so

4:37

flowerly. Like the ones that start with

4:40

per my last email. Yeah. I don't

4:42

know if they're all per my last

4:44

email, but there's something, it's almost like

4:47

flamboyant, you feel so mad, you're like,

4:49

I'm gonna demonstrate it with extra words.

4:51

Yeah, with beautiful pros. I wrote you

4:54

this haiku in rage. Yeah. I wrote

4:56

you this haiku in rage. Yeah. I

4:58

have a dumb short answer, which is

5:00

join a startup, because it will literally,

5:03

I was gonna say live or die.

5:05

It will definitely die on not having

5:07

a strong product culture. I feel like

5:10

the incentives to have a really high

5:12

quality product engineering culture are much stronger

5:14

at a small startup that is still

5:17

trying to find product market fit. Yes.

5:19

And also it's just easier to do

5:21

things at small numbers. It's hard to

5:23

have 50,000 software engineers and an excellent

5:26

product. culture, it's just really hard for

5:28

lots of reasons. Some of them technical,

5:30

some of them kind of personal or

5:33

human related, but my my pithy answer

5:35

is you might find this in big

5:37

tech on the right team, but I

5:40

think it's easier to find at a

5:42

startup. And it's also easier if it's

5:44

not there to turn it into this.

5:46

Yes, exactly. Exactly. I think the only

5:49

way you'll find this at a big

5:51

tech company is if you can find

5:53

a small stealth mode startup project within

5:56

the big tech company. Do you think

5:58

it has to be a stealth mode

6:00

thing that hasn't launched yet? Yeah, because

6:03

otherwise other people know about it. I

6:05

assume there has to be. Yeah. And

6:07

then they go and wreck it. People

6:10

are the only reason bureaucracy and process

6:12

exist. And so just mathematically, if you

6:14

reduce the number of people working on

6:16

a project, you also reduce all the

6:19

things, or at least the proclivity for

6:21

all the things that this, that Martin

6:23

here is complaining about. Like I was,

6:26

I worked on a big tech company

6:28

on a project that just two years

6:30

prior had been a tiny little startup

6:33

within a huge big tech company. And

6:35

by the time I got there, there

6:37

were 800 engineers working on it. And

6:39

I happened to talk to a couple

6:42

of the originals who worked on it.

6:44

And like, one of their projects was,

6:46

one of their tasks on the project

6:49

was that our project is so secret

6:51

that we're even going to encrypt our

6:53

log files so nobody can accidentally see

6:56

what it might be logging on some

6:58

server somewhere. Okay. They did all kinds

7:00

of fun stuff. I mean, it was

7:03

like, hey, we need someone to design

7:05

the protocol that's going to be used

7:07

by millions of devices to communicate with

7:09

our back-end services. Like, someone's got to

7:12

do that. And it's like, well, there's

7:14

only like eight of us, so we

7:16

don't have time to review your work,

7:19

just get to it, do a good

7:21

job, you know? I don't know. It's

7:23

just really cool. throw everything into prod

7:26

and small startups can be dysfunctional in

7:28

their own fun ways, very different from

7:30

giant mega corpse. But I do think

7:32

it's a lot easier to find. Go

7:35

ahead. Is that like a universal tradeoff

7:37

that must be made, which is that

7:39

if you sacrifice the apathy, big organizational

7:42

process, that you must adopt chaos? I

7:44

don't know if you adopt chaos, but

7:46

I feel like you are... operating in

7:49

a more chaotic environment. Yeah, I guess

7:51

less structure by definition probably. Yeah, I

7:53

think, I don't know if you have

7:55

to adopt it, but in, I don't

7:58

know, Microsoft is not going away any

8:00

time soon. Right, there's not any, they

8:02

would like to make more money until

8:05

they have all of the money that

8:07

exists in the world. Universal? Yeah, they

8:09

want to Microsoft maximize instead of paper

8:12

clip maximize. Every atom of the universe

8:14

is Microsoft. Just like every big tech

8:16

company would. But it's not an existential

8:19

day-to-day threat of like, oh my goodness,

8:21

we have to figure this thing out

8:23

or this meeting with this investor is

8:25

going to go wrong and then we

8:28

won't get our funding and then we

8:30

have two weeks of payroll left and

8:32

then we're doomed. I think a lot

8:35

of the chaos of startups comes from

8:37

that existential threat that if you don't

8:39

have anymore, you're kind of like not

8:42

a startup. and some good things come

8:44

out of it and some bad things

8:46

come out of it. It can be

8:48

very clarifying about what really matters though,

8:51

if you have that. It can also

8:53

not, like you can happily, what's that

8:55

expression? You move chairs around on the

8:58

deck while the ship is sinking or

9:00

something like that? Yes. Reranging chairs on

9:02

the tight end? Yeah, yeah, that thing.

9:05

Yeah, you can certainly do that. You

9:07

can certainly like type system your way

9:09

to running out of money or something.

9:12

But I think it's harder to do

9:14

because the cold hard face of capitalism

9:16

is like staring directly at. you of

9:18

like this will be gone and less.

9:21

Yeah you're not like seven degrees separated

9:23

from that reality. Yeah so my point

9:25

is some of the chaos is like

9:28

holy crap we got to make this

9:30

work and and that involves like trying

9:32

a bunch of different stuff and and

9:35

it just is more chaotic than like

9:37

we will continue to do the thing

9:39

that has made us a bunch of

9:41

money and optimize and tweak it a

9:44

little bit. But also a lot of

9:46

the chaos can be like I mean

9:48

processes and bureaucracy get a bad rap

9:51

and can be bad, but they sure

9:53

do offer a lot of stability and

9:55

predictability. Yeah, for sure, depending on what

9:58

you want to optimize for. Yeah, and

10:00

in the absence of all that, you

10:02

could be at the whim of... I

10:04

don't know, someone who had a bad

10:07

weekend and now like your company strategy

10:09

is different. For sure, for sure. There

10:11

is another advantage to working at a

10:14

smaller company, especially one that is growing,

10:16

which is that if you get in

10:18

early to that company, say you're one

10:21

of a core cohort of like five

10:23

engineers total for the whole company, and

10:25

you have some experience, and here I'm

10:28

listening to Martin's question where he says

10:30

after a decade, so I'm saying, okay,

10:32

you've got ten years of experience of

10:34

experience on your belt. What does that

10:37

mean? That means that if the company

10:39

is growing, you get to have a

10:41

hand in choosing who you will hire.

10:44

And when you have that kind of

10:46

control, you can filter for people who

10:48

match your level of excitement and dedication

10:51

to the craft and filter out people

10:53

who seem unmotivated, apathetic and uninterested. And

10:55

so I've seen that at a lot

10:57

of companies that I've gone to, where

11:00

I joined small and grew the company.

11:02

the engineering team, like for example, I

11:04

mean, I joined as the third in-person

11:07

engineer to a startup a little over

11:09

10 years ago, and I think we

11:11

grew it to about 50 engineers over

11:14

time. And I kid you not, every

11:16

single one of those 50 engineers that

11:18

we hired was really great. I mean,

11:21

there was almost zero apathy. Everyone was

11:23

excited about software development. Everyone was excited

11:25

to be part of the team. I'm

11:27

not saying like everyone, every moment was

11:30

walking around with a smile that was

11:32

unrealistically big on their face. But by

11:34

and large everyone had those values aligned

11:37

and in my opinion the only way

11:39

to really get values adopted by a

11:41

culture of people is to choose people

11:44

who bring those values. Because it's just

11:46

so hard to change someone who's like,

11:48

look, my whole purpose in working is

11:50

to punch this clock, get the paycheck,

11:53

I'm apathetic about the company, I'm not

11:55

excited about the craft, I'm just here

11:57

to work my hours and get my

12:00

pay, it's really hard to take someone

12:02

like that and say, no, I want

12:04

you to be excited about this. You

12:07

know, like, think about how fun it'll

12:09

be too. work on my meeting agenda

12:11

and follow this process, this is probably

12:13

not going to happen. Yeah, I think

12:16

there's probably a selection effect where if

12:18

you join a startup you are more

12:20

likely to join a group of people

12:23

that are excited because I think those

12:25

people seek out the startup, if that

12:27

makes sense. Yeah. I feel like all

12:30

the advice we've given so far has

12:32

been quit your big tech company job,

12:34

join a startup. I do think you

12:37

can carve out some space within your

12:39

current team. to have, I don't know,

12:41

easier product iterations. So when I worked

12:43

at a giant mega corp, we had

12:46

one product, it was pretty mature, had

12:48

a ton of stakeholders, ton of dependencies.

12:50

You couldn't just go try stuff on

12:53

it very easily because it was very

12:55

settled in place. And that would be

12:57

likely to break someone, break them emotionally

13:00

as you. crippled their service by adding

13:02

what you thought was a cool new

13:04

feature. But we had another project that

13:06

was a lot more free form and

13:09

experimental because it didn't exist yet. We

13:11

were going to try and build a

13:13

new thing. I don't know if you

13:16

have a ton of freedom to define

13:18

new projects, but it's definitely easier to

13:20

carve out a subset, kind of a

13:23

small area, and say, in this area,

13:25

we're going to work in an agile

13:27

way, work the way I would like

13:30

to work. Then if that's successful, successful,

13:32

you get to turn that into a

13:34

night mirror. waterfall top-down command and control

13:36

slog. Yes. Your reward, you become that

13:39

what you hate. But you are at

13:41

the top. So you, the problem wasn't

13:43

top-down. was you're at the bottom. Yeah

13:46

and now you're at the top of

13:48

the pain pyramid. It was never about

13:50

the apathy where you were. Yeah. Oh

13:53

my goodness apathy. Yeah I mean I've

13:55

worked at some of these big tech

13:57

companies too I agree with your assessment

13:59

although it can be very challenging to

14:02

do that in that world you know

14:04

to kind of buck the trends and

14:06

say no we're doing things our own

14:09

way here. And I'll say that working

14:11

with a bunch of people in that

14:13

kind of bigger environment, I don't know

14:16

what's worse, working with a bunch of

14:18

people who are apathetic and uninterested in

14:20

the project, or working with people who

14:22

are apathetic, uninterested in the project, but

14:25

because of promotion incentives, they pretend to

14:27

be excited and interested in the project.

14:29

Exactly. That we're all very excited about.

14:32

Surely this time we will avoid all

14:34

the mistakes we've made in the past.

14:36

There's also a possibility given that Martin

14:39

has said that he's been bouncing from

14:41

between multiple jobs where he keeps running

14:43

into the same culture of apathy. I

14:46

think this is probably because Martin has

14:48

found himself in this interesting referral network

14:50

of companies that tend to have people

14:52

move between them that all share of

14:55

the same culture. And I think it's

14:57

time maybe he's been captured by the

14:59

gravity of that. culture and maybe it's

15:02

time to look for alternative paths to

15:04

go find a different company. So rather

15:06

than following the same patterns or following

15:09

a co-worker who went to some other

15:11

company like you know when I when

15:13

I worked at Amazon it was very

15:15

common for people to go work at

15:18

Microsoft and then follow their co-workers who

15:20

went to Microsoft and vice versa you

15:22

know it's like oh yeah we work

15:25

together at Microsoft we work together at

15:27

Facebook we were you know it's just

15:29

like all these people that kind of

15:32

just traveled to travel together. Yeah, yeah.

15:34

It could also be you're optimizing for

15:36

something, right? Big tech typically pays really

15:39

well. Sometimes they have... really high scale

15:41

problems that are interesting to work on.

15:43

Maybe the promotion, I don't know, pathway

15:45

or the programming languages, I don't know,

15:48

maybe there's something that has led you

15:50

to take these jobs, but now you

15:52

might need to optimize for something else

15:55

and it might require some tradeoffs. Maybe

15:57

you take a pay cut or a

15:59

smaller pay bump than you get from

16:02

switching jobs. Yeah. And optimize for an

16:04

excellent product team. One that you will

16:06

love with all your heart. Yes. One

16:08

that will be agile, where agile means

16:11

do what I think is right. Exactly.

16:13

Do you think we've answered the question?

16:15

Yes, I do. Good luck, Martin. Best

16:18

of luck. Dave, will you read our

16:20

next question? You bet I will. This

16:22

comes from an anonymous listener who says,

16:25

how do you judge your competency in

16:27

a technical skill, and when should you

16:29

include it on your resume? Should you

16:31

include a skill that you haven't used

16:34

in a while? or skills you've only

16:36

used in personal projects, or skills that

16:38

you feel you only have a basic

16:41

understanding of. I'm a friend and developer

16:43

and I've seen some job descriptions include

16:45

requirements, not nice to have, like back-end

16:48

experience, Java, CICD, and UIUX, Design Tools,

16:50

like Figma, and Photoshop, I could make

16:52

designs or UIUX, design tools, like Figma,

16:55

and Photoshop. I could make designs or

16:57

write the back-end code for a basic

16:59

CRUD app, especially if I'm building things.

17:01

I'm trying to find, I think Rob

17:04

Pike was on Google, or on, sorry,

17:06

on LinkedIn at one point. Maybe that

17:08

was a meme. Anyways, Rob Pike is,

17:11

he's the creator of UTF8, he's the

17:13

creator of, one of the co-creators of

17:15

Go, his resume is like, Xerox Park,

17:18

18 years, 10 years, distinguished engineer, and

17:20

then he had, like, he took the

17:22

LinkedIn skills assessment for Go. the language

17:24

that he created to prove I know

17:27

go. How did you do? passed according

17:29

to what I saw. Maybe it was

17:31

just a me, maybe someone made up

17:34

a fake LinkedIn page for him. But

17:36

I think that means the answer to

17:38

my question is whenever you can pass

17:41

the LinkedIn skills assessment for it. Right,

17:43

obviously. The true test of knowledge. Yes,

17:45

it's like the bar exam of yeah,

17:48

or at least the LSAT. Is that

17:50

the one? Yeah, that's the one that

17:52

you get into law school, but the

17:54

bar exam lets you practice law. I

17:57

mean, whatever the hardest test is, that's

17:59

what the LinkedIn skills assessment clearly is.

18:01

I think the hardest test is the

18:04

marshmallow test. They give to little kids,

18:06

right? That's right. I can never resist.

18:08

Yeah, I think the story of my

18:11

adult life has been continuously failing the

18:13

marshmallow test. Which is a problem, because

18:15

you can buy as many marshmallows as

18:17

you want as a grown-up. I know.

18:20

It's like, I'm an adult, and the

18:22

price tag per marshmallow is really low.

18:24

One of these days, I will pass

18:27

it though. I think the answer obviously

18:29

is on your resume. If you've ever

18:31

heard of a technology, you should write

18:34

it on your resume. Are you being

18:36

tongue-in-cheek? Is your tongue in your cheek?

18:38

That's what it seems... This is what

18:40

I seem to observe in every resume

18:43

I've read. It does seem to be

18:45

the standard. You just spam a bunch

18:47

of keywords. Or sometimes you... spam the,

18:50

I don't know, you look at the

18:52

job description and then you put the

18:54

text that is in the job description.

18:57

Yeah. Or these days, goodness gracious, there

18:59

are AI tools that will actually generate

19:01

custom resumes for a given job description

19:04

and they'll do it at scale so

19:06

you can generate like hundreds of these

19:08

resumes. One per job. Have we talked

19:10

about this? I don't know the podcast.

19:13

I don't think we have, but I've

19:15

been on the receiving end of some

19:17

of these resumes and it is making

19:20

things hard. Yeah, we are both hiring

19:22

right? I don't know if you're still

19:24

hiring. I just finished and it was

19:27

a laborious process. Thanks in part to

19:29

AI. Yeah, I'm hiring right now and

19:31

the sheer vol- of fraud,

19:33

not just like,

19:36

I mean, the volume

19:38

of everything is

19:40

higher, but the volume

19:43

of people just

19:45

lying and making stuff

19:47

up on the

19:50

resume seems a lot

19:52

higher than it

19:54

was last time I

19:57

was hiring a

19:59

year ago, so I

20:01

feel like AI

20:03

is something to do

20:06

with that. I

20:08

mean, I blame all

20:10

my problems on

20:13

AI, so that one's

20:15

gonna go on

20:17

the list. I

20:20

did not get a good night's

20:22

sleep last night, and I did spend

20:24

time sitting on my phone scrolling

20:27

and doing nothing, and I'm gonna assume

20:29

that AI is behind the addictive

20:31

dopamine algorithm stuff that made me sit

20:33

there and scroll. For sure. I

20:35

mean, we're talking about this tongue -in -cheek,

20:37

but I think the real answer

20:39

is like, sure, put it on if

20:41

you're reasonably competent, if you can

20:43

be expected to answer questions about it,

20:46

but if you are in a

20:48

bad spot, if you are counting on

20:50

the specific keywords in your resume

20:52

to bubble up to a recruiter that

20:54

has no knowledge of you because

20:56

the volume is just so high right

20:58

now. Yeah, that's true. Partly because

21:00

of AI, partly because of just a

21:03

weaker tech hiring, weaker job market.

21:05

I don't know, more people for fewer

21:07

spots. Honestly, I just ignore the

21:09

section of resumes that show a list

21:11

of technologies or languages or frameworks

21:13

or tools. I'm like, yeah, I don't

21:15

care that you said you know

21:17

Git. Like, all right, everyone knows Git.

21:20

It's like saying I know how

21:22

to use a keyboard or I'm really

21:24

good with word processors. You know,

21:26

it's like, okay, of course you are.

21:28

Like, you know how to use

21:30

a computer, but

21:32

back in the day, so I'll tell

21:34

you, about 20 years ago, I was at

21:36

a company where we did C++ and

21:39

if ever there was a language where you

21:41

don't wanna claim proficiency in, it's

21:43

C++. And we used to joke

21:46

because we would ask people, hey,

21:48

on a scale of one to

21:50

10, like this is candidates, you

21:52

know, on a scale of one

21:54

to 10, how would you rank

21:56

your C++ proficiency? And as interviewers

21:58

over years of interviewing candidates and

22:00

learning the language more, We would all rank

22:02

ourselves lower every year because we discovered Yes, like

22:05

when I joined the company.

22:07

I thought I was probably

22:09

a seven and three years

22:11

in I was probably like

22:13

a four And it was

22:15

like the denominator Increased in

22:17

this language because there's just so

22:19

much like oh template meta programming.

22:21

Okay Alright, you know, or oh,

22:23

the unfavorable diamond inheritance problem. Oh,

22:26

okay. You know, it's just like,

22:28

oh my goodness. It was just

22:30

every time I turned around there

22:32

was some crazy C++ Plus feature

22:34

that I didn't know about. And

22:36

so I'm like, well, I guess

22:38

my proficiency is lower than I thought.

22:40

So anyway, as a result, whenever we

22:42

interviewed a candidate and they said something

22:44

like eight or higher, we were like,

22:47

okay, we got an eight. So we

22:49

would start asking C++ trivia trivia questions

22:51

like idiots like idiots. I don't know

22:53

we just like had this smug self-satisfied

22:56

disgusting approach to that but it was

22:58

really funny because I'm like look if

23:00

you're gonna write I'm an 8 out

23:03

of 10 on C++ plus we felt

23:05

like you better be prepared to back

23:07

that up or else reality is gonna

23:09

smack you yeah but I think if

23:12

you feel like you could competently work

23:14

with the technology I think it's fine

23:16

to put on the resume I wouldn't

23:18

put like I'm an expert in this

23:21

thing like I'm an I don't know,

23:23

sure, throw it on there. What, ideally

23:25

your resume gives a, an idea of

23:28

the shape of developer you are,

23:30

kind of where your strengths

23:33

are. So maybe if you, if

23:35

you're a really strong front-end

23:37

developer, but you, you're,

23:39

I don't know, you dabble in

23:42

the back end, you've done some

23:44

sequel. If I can come away from

23:46

your resume knowing that, I feel

23:48

like it is successful. And I'm

23:51

like, I have no idea what

23:53

you mean by intermediate. That's,

23:55

that feels like a C plus plus

23:57

skill level type of problem where. Yes.

24:00

It is so deep that if you

24:02

say you are an expert, unless I've

24:04

heard your name and could buy your

24:06

book, you might not be. Exactly. So

24:09

this is why I, instead of listing

24:11

technologies and languages, I would rather that

24:13

candidates describe what they did with those

24:16

technologies. It's like it's one thing to

24:18

say I'm proficient. with Java. It's another

24:20

thing to say, I built a spring

24:23

application that serves up blog posts for

24:25

10,000 users or whatever, I don't know,

24:27

describe the project and then I'll be

24:29

the judge of how proficient I think

24:32

you are based on the depth of

24:34

experience that I can perceive you've used.

24:36

I think it also depends on what

24:39

type of role you are applying for.

24:41

If you are a front-end developer, but

24:43

you're trying to get into back-end roles

24:46

more. it's probably different than if you

24:48

are a front-end developer applying for front-end

24:50

roles and you want to emphasize, but

24:52

I'm also pretty well-rounded, like look at

24:55

all this other stuff I can do.

24:57

Yeah, fair enough. expertise in the thing

24:59

that you're looking for. And maybe you

25:02

say that instead of just saying I'm

25:04

well-rounded, you say something like, I have

25:06

a goal to learn a new technology

25:09

of framework every quarter for the last

25:11

four years. You know, it's something like

25:13

that. because I've just gone through so

25:15

many. Oh man. That's amazing. You're in

25:18

a bad place right now I'm sure.

25:20

Yeah, so I weigh my mood around

25:22

on this with having spent days going

25:25

through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

25:27

just blind applications from LinkedIn, but they

25:29

just all blur together. I know. It's

25:32

so true. It's so true. And whether

25:34

you put Java or not, unless it's

25:36

specifically hiring, I'm hiring a Java developer.

25:39

Then I hope your resume better say

25:41

Java somewhere on it. Yeah, and that's

25:43

good enough for you whether it says

25:45

Java or not. Yeah, like that you

25:48

got you probably have some filter that

25:50

you're trying to get rid of as

25:52

many of these resumes. as possible. No,

25:55

I can tell you my filter. I

25:57

don't know if this is a good

25:59

filter yet because we haven't finished hiring,

26:02

but with, yeah, many hundreds of applicants,

26:04

a resume that lists experience in the

26:06

tech that we use is not good

26:08

enough because there are like, all of

26:11

them, 500 of those. We're not going

26:13

to, we're not going to interview 500

26:15

people. So my filter was, is there

26:18

Literally anything that sticks out beyond, yes,

26:20

I've worked as a developer with the

26:22

technology you've chosen. Do you have a

26:25

blog that you write eloquently about technical

26:27

stuff? Because we value communication skills really

26:29

highly. Bam, you are probably through the

26:31

first screen. Got it. Do you have,

26:34

some of it is like, I don't

26:36

know, vetting, do I know someone who

26:38

works somewhere that you worked or are

26:41

you a referral that's obviously useful or,

26:43

but do you have something besides I

26:45

have worked as a developer? because so

26:48

have the other 500 people are probably

26:50

not actually probably not some of them

26:52

have not worked as a developer but

26:54

boy did they make a resume that

26:57

indicates I've worked as a Oh yeah

26:59

like all these projects that are like

27:01

actually just student projects that have no

27:04

users but it kind of looks like

27:06

or just straight up like I literally

27:08

invented this person on the resume right

27:11

right this person is not real yeah

27:13

we have found at least one of

27:15

those so far one that you detected

27:18

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's a it

27:20

is a crazy time. So I mean

27:22

resume advice is, oh boy, I don't

27:24

even know what to what advice to

27:27

give people anymore because it's such a

27:29

mess right now. If if you're in

27:31

the blind resume pool, you have to,

27:34

how do I put it? The conversion

27:36

rate, I guess, of people who just

27:38

yellow applied to getting an in-person interview

27:41

is like 1% I think for a

27:43

hiring process versus referrals are much higher

27:45

than that. Yeah, still not super high,

27:47

but I do feel like when it

27:50

comes to listing your technologies and your

27:52

level of familiarity, I do want to

27:54

suggest that suggests that, like, let's just

27:57

say you've passed the screening phase, where

27:59

you've gotten past the 500 interviews that

28:01

are in your same pool of applicants,

28:04

and now someone is actually considering your

28:06

resume, reading it over, maybe they're preparing

28:08

for an interview in person with you

28:10

or something. Now, what should your resume

28:13

say? And I have some suggestions on

28:15

this when it comes to which things

28:17

you should list, languages, technologies, etc. And

28:20

I would say, in that scenario, it's

28:22

really good to come up with. a

28:24

narrative story that describes your proficiency in

28:27

indirect terms by describing what you accomplished

28:29

with the technology language or tool. So

28:31

just as a kind of an orthogonal

28:33

example to this in a different industry,

28:36

one of my all-time favorite people on

28:38

this planet Earth is one of my

28:40

daughters, and she was applying for college

28:43

some years ago, and one of the

28:45

things she wanted to highlight about herself

28:47

is that she's a big reader. One

28:50

way to say that in like a

28:52

college essay or in this case a

28:54

resume is to say I'm a big

28:57

reader. But I thought to myself, if

28:59

you tell me I'm a big reader,

29:01

I'm like that could mean a lot

29:03

of different things to different people. It

29:06

could mean I read every Calvin and

29:08

Hobbs book. And so she was going

29:10

to write like I'm a big reader

29:13

on the college application or on the

29:15

college essays and I thought you know

29:17

that's that's that's good but I don't

29:20

think the reader will have a really

29:22

good vision of what that is. And

29:24

so it turns out she had actually

29:26

kept a list of all the books

29:29

she had ever read from a very

29:31

young age. And she went back and

29:33

backfilled a couple years that she was

29:36

trying to remember. Anyway, she counted them

29:38

up and it was thousands. And so

29:40

I said, why don't you write the

29:43

actual number of books you've read in

29:45

the essay? And it was like, I

29:47

don't remember the number, but it was

29:49

four digits. You know, it's like, okay,

29:52

great. Now, now the, the resume reader

29:54

made the, the conclusion rather than you

29:56

giving it to them. And I think

29:59

those kinds of conclusions, A, they're more

30:01

accurate and, and, and B. they're stickier

30:03

and I think people believe them more

30:06

rather than saying I'm a c++ plus

30:08

plus expert you could say things like

30:10

I built the world's first 2048 game

30:12

using nothing about c++ template metaprogramming it's

30:15

like boom you are a c++ plus

30:17

expert yeah well have we answered this

30:19

question I sure hope so because we

30:22

said a lot of words good well

30:24

hope you find a job the values

30:26

you using tech that you No, and

30:29

put on your resume in a way

30:31

that communicated that. Yes, and that you

30:33

won't be called out for. Yes. What

30:36

can people do if they want their

30:38

own questions answered? Just take a saunter

30:40

on over to softskills. audio using the

30:42

World Web, the World Web-wide. It's kind

30:45

of a new technology. If you don't

30:47

know about it, that's OK. Ask AI.

30:49

They'll tell you how to do it.

30:52

But one thing you'll want to hint

30:54

the AI. and we'll answer your question.

30:56

We will. We're getting to them. We

30:59

appreciate your questions and you listening, and

31:01

we will catch you next week.