Lots of people have spent the past few days discussing the perceived increase in difficulty in getting an entry-level programming job relative to the halcyon ZIRP days of yesteryear. I am sympathetic to new grads running into this; I am dismayed that when I ask some [1] of them what they've been doing their answer boils down to "sending out my resume to as many jobsites as possible" and "programming exercises."
It's hard to be prescriptive when it comes to the job market — I barely remember what being a new grad was like, and even then I was a white guy who could correctly deploy "orthogonal" during the soft-skills interview, and so I try not to opine on tactical advice and instead stick to talking about my lived experience as an interviewer.
Here is one thing though that I think is so criminally under-utilized by prospective applicants that it is worth calling out: writing friction logs. Friction logs:
- take very little time (you could dedicate five hours a week to this practice and end up with a dozen solid friction logs after a month)
- require no specific domain expertise
- require no financial investment
- strengthen your product skills
- strengthen your writing skills
- immediately make you stand out more than every other candidate with a welterweight GitHub Pages that links to your senior project
- provide an obvious in-road to a company that is more interesting & higher-value than yet another anodyne cover letter
Read Sebastian's terrific essay on how to write one; check out User Onboard for some higher-production value versions; go forth and log frictions.
(Putting my money where my mouth is: if you do this ten times, email me your blog and I'm happy to set up some time chatting with you and introducing you to people who work at companies that are hiring. Serious.)
Not all! Some! ↩︎
