| He lives in India. A programmer there makes 350,000 Rs a year. All these responses are so discouraging. "That long list makes you look unfocused and implies that you probably suck at a lot of technologies rather than being very good at a few." In my startup, we have everyone doing everything. If all someone knows is java, they are useless to us. Each of us had to learn 3 different new languages each just to get our product to launch. We do not have the luxury of having someone with 10 years experience who only knows Java. If something needed to be done, someone had to do it. If we did not have the skills in the group, we had to learn them. The critical factor for success in a startup is not 10 year of experience in one narrowly defined technical specialty. Specialization is for insects. The most important characteristics for effectiveness in a startup is the ability to learn and the capacity for getting things done. This is one of the key differences between working in a startup and working in a larger company. In a startup you have to do your own marketing, sales, programming, interface design... Everything needs to be done and it is an expensive luxury to have a person specialized in each area that is required. " That long list makes you look unfocused and implies that you probably suck at a lot of technologies rather than being very good at a few." "That's one way to work for free that will greatly enhance your value to potential employers. Start a blog, talk about your experiences with Rails, promote your open-source projects, etc. You'll soon find paid work coming your way." If you want to be poor for the rest of your life and at the mercy of an employer, this is probably a good strategy. Instead of attempting to make yourself more appealing for sale to your bourgeoisie overloads you would achieve greater success and freedom by focusing your efforts on creating something that has value and which people are willing to pay for. |
Specialising in something doesn't mean you can't do other stuff. I have done, in my time, Java, PHP, C, ActionScript, Ajax, Ruby/Rails.. hell even Basic and Pascal while I'm at it (and that's just the ones I actually built functioning software with...). But I wouldn't list those on my CV. At this point in my life, I'm primarily focused on the Rails + Flex stack, and I would be lying if I claimed that I'm proficient at all the technologies that I once was proficient at. You NEED to be able to pick up any technology required along the way, of course, but you can't be proficient in all those technologies at the same time.
I do not believe for one minute that this guy is proficient at all those technologies. It's a full time job just to keep up to date on Rails, let alone on Java and C# as well! The obvious conclusion from that list is that they're just technologies he's familiar with, rather than technologies he's good at. Therefore, the obvious conclusion from this "CV" is that he's not good at any of those technologies (or at least there's no hint as to which he might be good at), and just listed them all in a shotgun approach. That is NOT a good hiring signal.
If you want to be poor for the rest of your life and at the mercy of an employer, this is probably a good strategy. Instead of attempting to make yourself more appealing for sale to your bourgeoisie overloads you would achieve greater success and freedom by focusing your efforts on creating something that has value and which people are willing to pay for.
Bullshit. That strategy (blogging/being active in the community + copious open source contributions) will soon have you connected with more freelance work than you know what to do with. Beyond starting a start-up (which this guy is clearly not ready for yet), it's pretty much as close to freedom as you're gonna get as a programmer.
Working for YOUR start-up? That's not HIS freedom, dude, that's just slavery in service of YOUR freedom.