David Guttman - JTS Community Q&A 1

Junior to Senior with David Guttman

Talking Points:

• Is it a problem if you personal GitHub is not showing a lot of activity? / Is it OK to have a basic portfolio site that has the basics? / How can you show that you are capable? How can you stand out from other people?
• How do I provide value to a company if I do not currently know all the in demand frameworks?
• How do you make an employer trust you enough so that they take a chance on hiring you?

Quotable Quotes:

• "You don't need a GitHub that shows lots of activity"
• "When a Hiring Manager is looking at you, you want them to get as good of an idea of what to expect, if you were on the job, as possible"
• "If you have it on display, they [Hiring Managers] don't need to wonder if you are capable of it"
• "You have more control [with a portfolio site] over what you want them [Hiring Managers] to see"
• "You can be as creative as you want, and as distinctive and memorable as you want"
• "The more clearly you show the value that you can bring if somebody hires you, the better"
• "What really matters to a lot of companies is the value that their product, service or platform is providing to their users"
• "Provide to them [companies] the things that help them make more money, save money or save time"
• "One of the things that we are good at as engineers is learning new things, none of us were born knowing React or NodeJs or Vue or anything like that"
• "Prove that you are not gonna cost more trouble than help you're gonna provide"
• "Control that first impression of you [...] Demonstrate that you're capable in solving their problems, saving them time, helping them make more money"
• "As an Engineering Manager what you are worried about more than anything else is that this person won't be able to do the work and in particular that they are going to be more disruptive than they are helpful"
• "You just need to make them [Hiring Managers] very confident that you can come in, do the work that they need done, do the technical work, that you won't require a lot of baby sitting"
• "You won't be distracting the manager a lot with questions or complains or whatever. You are actually capable of taking directions and doing the work, that you are not going to disrupt the rest of the team and that you are gonna be generally a nice person and ideally fun to be around, adding to the culture"
• "One of the worst things that you can do is to get stuck on an issue for too long and not let anyone know"
• "Before you ask any particular question take at least 15 minutes to try whatever you can to solve it and document what you tried and what the responses were"
• "Remember that how you say things matters just as much as what you say"

Notes:

Junior to Senior Community
community.juniortosenior.io