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Alex63
Joined 375 karma
Past developer and technical architect. Senior consultant in technology implementation for many years. Now a director for an international eCommerce retailer.
- It's probably mostly idiomatic. For native English-speakers it is more natural to use "number" when talking about things that are counted units that would be represented by integers (like marbles, or children, or features). "Amount" would be more appropriate when talking about something that you measure and represent with a floating point number (like butter, or gasoline/petrol, or risk). But an English-speaker will understand what you mean if you say "amount of features" instead of "number of features."
And since we're being picky, it should be "the latter is correct", not "the later is correct."
- Off topic: I thought (probably incorrectly) that the EU required that the cookie preferences for sites were supposed to offer "Reject All" if they offered "Accept All". I realize The New Statesman may not need to comply since Brexit, but their opt-out logic seems almost to be calculated to make people give up before they opt out of everything. Net result is that I didn't read an article that might have interested me, and I didn't see any of their advertisements because I didn't want to be tracked.
- Slightly off topic, but related: I'm always interested in the different approach to public "right of ways" in the US (and Canada) versus the UK. Given that the concept of public right of way was well established in the UK before the colonial period, why didn't the colonies recognize rights of way based on well-established use? Based on my limited knowledge of the US and Canada, I'm not aware of any State or Province that recognizes the right of the public to cross private land on established paths/trails in the way that is recognized in the UK.
- Canonical example? The Enemy Within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_Within_(Star_Trek:_T...
- My original point, posited slightly provocatively, was to suggest that one should think about whether the "destruction of capitalism" would leave anyone interested (or able) to perform Operations tasks for an information system. Your response was something of a non-sequitur, since I wasn't really questioning whether there might be people still interested in contributing to an Open Source project. Nonetheless, I felt some social pressure to signal that I appreciate contributions to open source work (with the proviso that we still need to obtain the necessities of life from somewhere).
Do you think the comment to which I originally responded was a "thought experiment"? To me it sounded like another knee-jerk anti-capitalist response that ignores the realities of life today. It certainly wasn't a very practical response to the question of how one works in Operations without burning out. So read my response as a knee-jerk pro-capitalist response.
- I applaud those who contribute to open source projects out of passion and curiosity. But presumably they are still participating in some "capitalist" endeavour that puts food on their table and a roof over their head (and pays the electricity bill for whatever they choose to use for development).
- Hopefully, after you "destroy capitalism and wash away the weird bourgeois conception of having a 'career'", there will still be some people around who want to be in Operations and keep information systems running. Of course, we'll probably be too busy subsistence farming to worry about information systems.
- The Serve The Home articles inspired me to go this route. I want to improve my understanding of Kubernetes for work. I picked up an HP EliteDesk 705 G4 mini desktop and an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 mini desktop. Each was less than $200, and included 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, HDMI and DP outputs, and a power brick. One from Amazon ("renewed") and one from eBay. My 705 came with a Ryzen 2400G, and the 800 came with a i5-8500. I'm not planning to stack them so I was happy with the 65W chips although it means keeping the top of the case clear for cooling. Serve The Home recommends the 35W chips if you are going to stack them.
- As of 2017, Casio FX-9860GII. Overkill for actual usage, but cheap -- so why not?
Before that, TI-30XS from 2013 and the TI-36X from 2011. The 36X is still in my laptop bag. Can't remember what I had before 2011 -- some old "programmer's calculator" from the 90s.
My wife (and various colleagues) thinks I'm crazy, but it's actually easier to grab the calculator from the desk and do a quick calculation than to open/use the calculator app.
- You did not ask for feedback on your resume (found through your profile), so I hope you won't be offended by my observations. Your resume looks good: format is clean and will probably scan well, you've highlighted your technical skills and kept the list to a reasonable length, and you've done a good job of providing an appropriate level of detail about your past experiences. You probably know all that because the services you have used have told you.
Here are a couple of things that you may not have heard yet. First, I think for now it would be better not to list your intention to start an undergraduate degree in the fall. I think almost any hiring manager would see that and wonder how you were going to be able to balance being a student and settling into a new job. Remember, the point of your resume is to get you an interview, not to give the hiring manager reasons to reject you. Even if you are committed to being a part-time student in the fall, you don't have to put that in your resume. You may feel that showing you are committed to getting a degree will address concerns about education, but hiring managers are selfish -- first and foremost they want to know that you are going to be focused on doing the job.
My second point may not be popular, but I feel I have to bring it up. Your experience and skills, and your stated focus on front-end development, position you in what is essentially a commodity market. There are lots of developers these days with strong Javascript and Python skills. If you want to stand out from the crowd you are going to have to work really hard to differentiate yourself. What particular skills or experience could you highlight that make you a premium resource, and not just a commodity programmer? It might be knowledge of a CMS that is not widely used. It might be practical experience with a very new technology. Maybe it's your familiarity with a particular business function or process. I think you need to figure out what makes you special and highlight it more in your resume.
I hope these thoughts are helpful. Good luck with your job search!
- I like this heuristic! It captures several important aspects of "seniority" in a clever way.
A lot of the other comments are defining seniority in terms of years of experience or breadth of skills developed. Those are both important, but for me they don't capture how "well-rounded" you are. When I was a manager in consulting we used to distinguish between resources who had "5 years of experience" and resources who had "1 year of experience 5 times". Your years of experience need to be extending your capabilities, not just repetition of skills you have already mastered.
I think simple rules of thumb, like "5 years is a junior" or "5 years is a senior" aren't very helpful. When I'm hiring I may suggest a certain amount of experience as a requirement to indicate to candidates that I see the role as suitable for someone "entry-level" or someone further along in their career. But I'm not going to reject a candidate with good experience simply because they don't have the number of years experience I suggested. I'm going to look at what they've done.
One more thought on this topic. For me, years of experience can also be shorthand for variety of experience. Someone with 3 or even 5 years of experience is unlikely to have worked on a lot of big projects in different organizations. Someone with 15+ years of experience is more likely to have worked on a variety of big projects in different organizations. Some commenters here are probably going to tell me "5 years of experience at a start-up" is as good or better than 15 years of experience in a big corporate IT shop. Maybe. Depends on the role I'm trying to fill.
- I reviewed your CV as well. I am a former programmer/analyst/architect, now an IT director. I have reviewed a lot of CVs as a hiring manager. I agree with the feedback you have already received. Here are some additional thoughts.
You have listed a lot of experience, mainly focusing on technical skills. When I review a CV I focus more on the last 5 or 10 years than roles from 30 years ago (unless I'm looking for someone to do COBOL maintenance). I suggest providing more information about experience in the last 5 or 10 years. I wouldn't worry too much about listing specific projects/assignments before that.
Your CV emphasizes your technical skills, but doesn't provide much insight into other skills. Perhaps for some of your recent projects you could highlight other ways in which you contributed to a successful outcome. Were you the lead developer? Did you interact with users - maybe in an agile process? What aspects of the software development life cycle were you responsible for?
So, based on your current CV, I might suggest a some entries like these:
Subtlety Communications, April 2022 - December 2022
- Vulnerability Mitigation Project
- Live Chat ApplicationLead developer responsible for analyzing vulnerability reports, identifying appropriate mitigation, implementing and testing mitigation. Reported to CISO. Javascript, React.Senior member of agile application development team responsible for front-end development. Automated generation of Docker config files to improve CI/CD processes. Docker, Typescript, React. - You could be right, but I'm not really seeing a lot of evidence that "most of the country is ready to move on and accept Biden as President." Not seeing a lot of those Trump rally-goers suddenly deciding that Biden is OK. In fact what I see is a lot of Trump supporters outraged about what they believe is shaping up to be a stolen election. And a lot of comments to the effect that Trump is not Nixon (1960).
- 2 points
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/pressdemocrat/name/rand...