DEV Community: Kevin Goldsmith

Sweat the details on your resume, especially if you are a developer or technology leader

Kevin Goldsmith — Mon, 29 May 2023 17:36:14 +0000

Every hiring manager has things that will influence them positively or negatively about a person when reading their resume or CV. Given how critical attention to detail is for developers and technical leaders, lacking attention to detail is a warning flag for me and many other leaders I speak to.

Your resume is a simple enumeration of your experience and the first sample of work you present to a potential employer. Many developers neglect the quality of their resume because they aren’t comfortable with writing, not comfortable talking about themselves, or simply because they don’t think it is important. When there are shortages of skilled developers, hiring managers will often overlook formatting, spelling, or grammar mistakes in a resume. When the hiring manager has multiple good choices for a role, seemingly small things can make a big difference in the perception of you as a candidate.

Weaving in the Details

Remember that your resume is more than a list; it’s a story of your professional journey, skills, and aptitudes. The quality of this narrative directly impacts a hiring manager’s perception of you. So, while it’s crucial to include your significant accomplishments and skills, attention to detail helps to fill in the gaps and provide a comprehensive picture.

For example, including specific project details, like what technologies you used, your role in the project, and the quantifiable results, can set you apart from the competition. These details reveal the true extent of your abilities and demonstrate your authentic experience as a technologist and your focus on the outcome, not just the output of your work.

Evidence of Care and Dedication

Meticulous attention to detail on a resume is a positive signal to employers. It’s a testament to your dedication and commitment to excellence. On the other hand, errors, inconsistencies, or vague descriptions can give the impression of carelessness or lack of effort. Spelling and grammar mistakes, easily caught by a spelling or grammar checker in a document editor, are red flags. If you have front-end or user-facing application development experience, inconsistent or poor formatting questions your skills.

Detailing Technical Proficiencies

Specificity in listing your technical skills is another area where detail matters immensely. A generic mention of “programming languages” won’t do the job. Instead, list each language and technology you are proficient in, ideally linking them to your professional experience or projects.

Compatibility with Job Descriptions

Lastly, close attention to the job description can make all the difference. Customizing your resume to fit the specifics of the role shows a proactive and thorough approach.

How to debug your resume

Use a spelling and grammar checker.
Have a friend (preferably someone experienced in reviewing resumes) proofread it.
If you are putting your resume into a language where you are not a native speaker, have a couple of people who are native speakers read it over for tone and phrasing.
If you are unsure how to phrase something, find other resumes (or LinkedIn profiles) from folks with similar experiences to see how they express it.
If you are updating your resume with new experience, read it thoroughly to ensure that the new and old sections have the same tone of voice and style.
Once you have made your changes, put your resume aside for a day or two and then reread it with fresh eyes to catch anything you may have missed.

These things seem obvious, but I can’t count the times I’ve found glaring errors in resumes where the candidate did not follow those steps.

Don’t disqualify yourself for silly reasons!

Attention to detail in a resume could be the difference between getting your foot in the door or having it firmly shut. As a technical professional, your attention to detail should reflect in your work, and there’s no better place to start demonstrating it than your resume.

A well-crafted, detailed resume is your representative in your absence, showcasing your abilities and a testament to your commitment to precision. So, the next time you revise your resume, remember to keep the details in focus. It might just be your key to the next big opportunity.

Your resume is an opportunity to illustrate who you are as a professional and how you approach your work. Attention to detail not only elevates your resume above the rest but also demonstrates the values essential to success in technology: meticulousness, precision, and a deep understanding of your craft. The details aren’t just details; they’re differentiators.

Previously posted at https://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2023/05/29/sweat-the-details-on-your-resume-especially-if-you-are-a-developer-or-technology-leader/

How Being a Bass Player Made Me a Better Dev Lead

Kevin Goldsmith — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 15:00:00 +0000

I’ve been playing bass since I was 15. I play other instruments as well, but I have always been primarily a bass player.

Music has always been not only a joy to me but also a salve. Writing software and leading technology organizations is such an “in your head” endeavor. Playing music for me is much more about intuition and feeling. I can do it for pure pleasure, and if I stumble on something I like, I can go deeper, or just hope I find it again in the future. No stress.

I was recently talking to another technology leadership friend about playing bass, and it made me realize how many things those two pursuits share.

While you can play bass alone, it is not a solo instrument. You need a band. Similarly, you can’t do much as a leader unless you are part of a team.

A good bass player may move to the front from time to time, but usually, they are in the back, keeping everything on track. A bass player keeps the groove going, pushes the song forward, but isn’t necessarily the one that everyone is looking at. If the bass player isn’t there, though, the band is missing a critical element. A lead is a vital element of a development team, but a lot of the value they add isn’t always visible.

While I always appreciated and admired the well-known quick-fingered, super-complex players like Geddy Lee, Flea, Les Claypool, and Mark King, the bass players who most influenced my playing are people like Peter Hook, Paul McCartney, Carol Kaye, and James Jamerson who excelled with elegant simplicity. A worthy engineering lead is not about flash, but about substance. Not interested in complexity for complexity’s sake, but in doing what the team needs and no more. As the Swedes say, “lagom.”

As part of the rhythm section, the bass player works with the drummer to keep time, but also to modulate and push things when needed. As a bass player, you might be helping an over-caffeinated drummer not push the tempo, or you might be conspiring with the drummer to give the song a bit more energy if you think that is what the audience needs. The lead of the team needs to be aware of the team’s dynamics and maintain a good pace, but also be mindful of the customer, and the business and push the team when needed.

While the bass is a melodic instrument, it isn’t necessarily carrying the melody. It supports the melody, tracking the chord changes. The bass player keeps the structure of the song, which allows the other instruments to take chances, embellish, or step into the spotlight to solo. Similarly, the engineering lead maintains the team’s vision, architecture, and the big picture so that the members of the team can shine or try out new ideas without fear of losing the thread of what is essential.

In a recent Lifehack article, Joseph Jo identified “8 Desirable Dating Qualities Of A Bass Player.”

I thought that six of the eight also are desirable qualities of an engineering lead:

They Love to be Connected
They Are Content Regardless of the Lack of Attention
They are Passively Creative
They are Considerate
They Tune in with People
They are the Artists of Adaptation

So, if you want to be a better engineering lead, you don’t need to buy a bass and join a band, but you might want to start trying to think more like a bass player.

Cleaning up markdown generated from pandoc with Python

Kevin Goldsmith — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 06:13:20 +0000

I’ve been playing around with Pelican lately, using it to build my new Nimble Autonomy, LLC site (more on that soon).

So far, I like Pelican as a static site generator. It seems to strike a reasonable balance between generality and power. I previously used Hugo to build the Unit Circle Rekkids site. I found it reasonably decent, but not life-changing. That site’s content doesn’t change that often, so once it was built, I have only had to make an occasional tweak. This new site will be changing a bit more often.

To get some content on the new site, I wanted to republish some posts from this blog. Using the instructions for WordPress Export and Pelican-import, I was able to generate some markdown from my WordPress posts, but it was a bit underwhelming.

There was a lot of this kind of gunk in the markdown:

<!-- wp:paragraph -->`{=html}While I am an experienced video-conferencer and a reasonably experienced presenter, presenting to a remote audience is still something I am learning how to do. Having just given a talk this morning, I did want to share some things that are working well for me at the moment.`<!-- /wp:paragraph -->`{=html}`<!-- wp:heading -->`{=html}The Tools **---------** `<!-- /wp:heading -->`{=html}`<!-- wp:paragraph -->`{=html}

Only a few of my images were even referenced. I quickly realized that if I was going to try to move more than a handful of articles over, I was going to be spending a lot of time hand-editing the generated markdown.

This was an obvious problem that automation could fix. As I was using a python-based static-site generator, I decided to use python to do my cleanup. I’m sharing the code below as it may help others who are trying to solve the same problem. At some point, I might try to create a pull-request for it with Pelican, but right now I am just trying to move forward on other things.

It isn’t the best or cleanest python I’ve written, this was done quickly with a lot of iteration to catch all the corner cases. It could also be more pythonic. It is also very opinionated in the Markdown that it creates.

At some point, I may clean it up, but really I’m supplying it here because I have to believe that other people have hit the same problem and I want to save those folks some time.

Feel free to fork and improve!

see the gist here