I'm the author and also a daily Hacker News devotee so I thought I'd share this with the community. It's based on my advice from over a decade of writing what is now the USA's largest career advice newsletter.
The challenge many engineers face in managing their careers is their strong preference for substance over presentation layer. It's mostly awesome to be so substantive, especially when actually in a job, but when trying to maximize the outcome of a job search function, merely dismissing the importance of communicating your capabilities leads to sub-optimal results.
(OK, fine, if you're in SF / NYC during a tech boom and know the latest hot technologies, absolutely none of this applies to you... you will be getting spammed daily with offers, so no need for a resume. Just write "for hire" on your arm and you'll be making $160,000 / year...)
But if you're even a few years into your career, thinking about how you present yourself is worth doing.
I've spoken to enough Engineering mangers, VPs, directors, and CTOs over the past decade to know that this advice is useful in engineering management, just as it is in management in other parts of the organization. I guess I'd be interested to know if others think this can be applied to "fingers on the keyboards" engineers. My first guess is 'no', to be honest, but I'm interested to see what the community says.
The challenge many engineers face in managing their careers is their strong preference for substance over presentation layer. It's mostly awesome to be so substantive, especially when actually in a job, but when trying to maximize the outcome of a job search function, merely dismissing the importance of communicating your capabilities leads to sub-optimal results.
(OK, fine, if you're in SF / NYC during a tech boom and know the latest hot technologies, absolutely none of this applies to you... you will be getting spammed daily with offers, so no need for a resume. Just write "for hire" on your arm and you'll be making $160,000 / year...)
But if you're even a few years into your career, thinking about how you present yourself is worth doing.
I've spoken to enough Engineering mangers, VPs, directors, and CTOs over the past decade to know that this advice is useful in engineering management, just as it is in management in other parts of the organization. I guess I'd be interested to know if others think this can be applied to "fingers on the keyboards" engineers. My first guess is 'no', to be honest, but I'm interested to see what the community says.