Resume Critique
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You are back to the taxi problem. For "doing minimal baseline IT work" to appear as competent, it requires that our comparison be against abject failure.
You want the taxi driver to sound impressive for just driving people around to a minimal level. So you mention how they considered having you drive into a brick wall. If you are saying that competence is generated by "avoiding total failure", that's the very thing I'm warning against. You are setting the bar for success below industry baseline.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
And, like I said, if "abject failure" propositions are being considered, why not add in some even crazier ones - enough to inflate the success number to whatever you want? There is always someone willing to quote you any insanity in the hopes that someone is so clueless as to the think that the more that you spend, the better the deal. Someone will quote thirty, or even one hundred servers. And a few SANs to go with it. And networking gear. And fibre channel switches. And so forth. With that many servers, it would be easy to get quotes showing a savings in the millions. I mean truly trivial.
The number is trivial. Of course. I'm saying it's the fact that you prevented the f*** up that's important.
Right, and I'm saying two things....
- Don't put opinion numbers. If you dont' think it is important, why is it getting space on the CV?
- Don't use "abject failure" as a mark of success. That you HAD to prevent a problem like that is not something that you should be mentioning. No amount of mitigating a failure of that magnitude will look impressive - that's the taxi / wall problem.
Number 2 is wrong IMO. Saying you are able to stop a project and change it to stop failure is extremely important.
So, we should assume all companies only ever make the correct decision and an IT employee never has to use their competence to steep a company in the correct direction, or discuss that they prevented the failure entirely, in SAM land? Crazy.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
And, like I said, if "abject failure" propositions are being considered, why not add in some even crazier ones - enough to inflate the success number to whatever you want? There is always someone willing to quote you any insanity in the hopes that someone is so clueless as to the think that the more that you spend, the better the deal. Someone will quote thirty, or even one hundred servers. And a few SANs to go with it. And networking gear. And fibre channel switches. And so forth. With that many servers, it would be easy to get quotes showing a savings in the millions. I mean truly trivial.
The number is trivial. Of course. I'm saying it's the fact that you prevented the f*** up that's important.
Right, and I'm saying two things....
- Don't put opinion numbers. If you dont' think it is important, why is it getting space on the CV?
- Don't use "abject failure" as a mark of success. That you HAD to prevent a problem like that is not something that you should be mentioning. No amount of mitigating a failure of that magnitude will look impressive - that's the taxi / wall problem.
Number 2 is wrong IMO. Saying you are able to stop a project and change it to stop failure is extremely important.
Not if it required undermining all of your value to do so.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
Why are you saying I'm comparing to failure? No failure here.
IT is business. Business buying fifteen servers to do the job of one is failure. Period. That's what failure means in business - not doing things that are good for the business. You are cherry picking a massive failure (wasting $150K for no reason) and using that failure assumption (where did that come from?) to compare against "what was done."
Buying sixteen servers to do the job of one is literally just like driving the taxi into the brick wall. It's insane, illogical and no one that knows how to drive would do it. So you don't use avoiding brick walls as the baseline for success. You don't use 16,000% overprovisioning as the baseline for success, either.
I didn't say but 16 to do the job of one. I said buy one, where 16 was proposed. Showing you can help a company and steer them in a better direction saving money is a great thing.
But how did sixteen get propose and why was the company talking to someone looking to screw them like that and why was that taken seriously? See the problem? To make the Hyper-V deployment sound "cool" we have to throw the company competence under the bus. And in doing so, we take any value proposition that we add to it along with it because we've only demonstrated that "business smarts" are what was missing.
If the goal is to show business smarts, you can't push business smarts in front of the bus.
Because, whatever reason for any bad project. Whoever can stop bad solution for far better, should say that. Stopping the bollocks up project and putting something better in place is a success.
Not success that you want to brag about to someone else. Telling them that the place you worked for was incompetent but that you were at least "less incompetent" is absolutely not what you want to be showing off on your CV. You want people to want to hire you, not want to avoid you.
Why less incompetent? How is that a thing here? This is saying on the CV that you stopped the team from being incompetent... By actually being competent.
No, it shows that you feel imcompetence is the base line. And it only shows "less incompetence", nothing in it demonstrates competence.
Yes it does.Getting things done the correct way, where they were going to be done the wrong way before you changed it... IS COMPETENCE.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
So, we should assume all companies only ever make the correct decision and an IT employee never has to use their competence to steep a company in the correct direction, or discuss that they prevented the failure entirely, in SAM land? Crazy.
This not a logical point to have reached.
This shows how much the taxi and brick wall example holds. You feel that total incompetence isn't just common enough, but that avoiding it alone is enough to brag about.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
Why are you saying I'm comparing to failure? No failure here.
IT is business. Business buying fifteen servers to do the job of one is failure. Period. That's what failure means in business - not doing things that are good for the business. You are cherry picking a massive failure (wasting $150K for no reason) and using that failure assumption (where did that come from?) to compare against "what was done."
Buying sixteen servers to do the job of one is literally just like driving the taxi into the brick wall. It's insane, illogical and no one that knows how to drive would do it. So you don't use avoiding brick walls as the baseline for success. You don't use 16,000% overprovisioning as the baseline for success, either.
I didn't say but 16 to do the job of one. I said buy one, where 16 was proposed. Showing you can help a company and steer them in a better direction saving money is a great thing.
But how did sixteen get propose and why was the company talking to someone looking to screw them like that and why was that taken seriously? See the problem? To make the Hyper-V deployment sound "cool" we have to throw the company competence under the bus. And in doing so, we take any value proposition that we add to it along with it because we've only demonstrated that "business smarts" are what was missing.
If the goal is to show business smarts, you can't push business smarts in front of the bus.
Because, whatever reason for any bad project. Whoever can stop bad solution for far better, should say that. Stopping the bollocks up project and putting something better in place is a success.
Not success that you want to brag about to someone else. Telling them that the place you worked for was incompetent but that you were at least "less incompetent" is absolutely not what you want to be showing off on your CV. You want people to want to hire you, not want to avoid you.
Why less incompetent? How is that a thing here? This is saying on the CV that you stopped the team from being incompetent... By actually being competent.
No, it shows that you feel imcompetence is the base line. And it only shows "less incompetence", nothing in it demonstrates competence.
Yes it does.Getting things done the correct way, where they were going to be done the wrong way before you changed it... IS COMPETENCE.
There is no suggestion that things were done in a good or correct way. Only that total, insane failure was avoided in one specific area.
But not totally avoided, because insane levels of "fixing bad planning" had to be done that even a moderately bad company would have avoided from the get go.
You are making leaps of logic from "avoiding disaster" to being equated to "success."
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
So, we should assume all companies only ever make the correct decision and an IT employee never has to use their competence to steep a company in the correct direction, or discuss that they prevented the failure entirely, in SAM land? Crazy.
This not a logical point to have reached.
This shows how much the taxi and brick wall example holds. You feel that total incompetence isn't just common enough, but that avoiding it alone is enough to brag about.
Yes it is. Avoiding incompetence and going things the correct way, when before you the incorrect way was planned... Is something to brag about. 100%
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
So, we should assume all companies only ever make the correct decision and an IT employee never has to use their competence to steep a company in the correct direction, or discuss that they prevented the failure entirely, in SAM land? Crazy.
This not a logical point to have reached.
This shows how much the taxi and brick wall example holds. You feel that total incompetence isn't just common enough, but that avoiding it alone is enough to brag about.
Yes it is. Avoiding incompetence and going things the correct way, when before you the incorrect way was planned... Is something to brag about. 100%
So literally you now agree with my taxi / wall example?
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
Yes it is. Avoiding incompetence and going things the correct way,
This isn't something you can say. Avoiding a bad decision isn't the same as making a good decision.
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Right now, your suggestion for the CV is not to show success, but to show avoidance of total failure. Don't you see how those are not the same things?
Driving a taxi well, improving over baseline, doing things that aren't just expected as part of "showing up" - that's success in differing degrees.
Not driving into walls, people and lampposts is just "avoiding failure."
We brag about success, we don't brag about avoiding failure.
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What happened to staying on topic?
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Also, success is limited. Avoiding failure should be unlimited. The number of failures that are avoided every day have no limit. Take this example... not only did we not avoid buying 16 servers, we avoided buying 17, 18, 19..... the number of horrendous decisions that were not made are literally unlimited. Why pick this one failure that was avoided to brag about and not all of those?
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@black3dynamite said in Resume Critique:
What happened to staying on topic?
We are totally on topic of who to write a CV.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
So, we should assume all companies only ever make the correct decision and an IT employee never has to use their competence to steep a company in the correct direction, or discuss that they prevented the failure entirely, in SAM land? Crazy.
This not a logical point to have reached.
This shows how much the taxi and brick wall example holds. You feel that total incompetence isn't just common enough, but that avoiding it alone is enough to brag about.
Yes it is. Avoiding incompetence and going things the correct way, when before you the incorrect way was planned... Is something to brag about. 100%
So literally you now agree with my taxi / wall example?
No. The taxi/wall example was awful.
I'm disagreement with you. I'm saying sterile away from something bad to something good is worth bragging about.
You are saying it should have never remember bad to need to make that change. Well in a perfect world of course. But the world isn't perfect, an stopping the mistake is a success. And should be on the CV.
Saying that's not good as is should never have been wrong is just bollocks. Things go wrong, showing you can make them go the correct way is important.
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What a hiring manager or new company cares about:
- That you know technical things or have skills and experience (e.g. I can do this thing.)
- That you make good decisions and have good understanding (e.g. I think well about things.)
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
So, we should assume all companies only ever make the correct decision and an IT employee never has to use their competence to steep a company in the correct direction, or discuss that they prevented the failure entirely, in SAM land? Crazy.
This not a logical point to have reached.
This shows how much the taxi and brick wall example holds. You feel that total incompetence isn't just common enough, but that avoiding it alone is enough to brag about.
Yes it is. Avoiding incompetence and going things the correct way, when before you the incorrect way was planned... Is something to brag about. 100%
So literally you now agree with my taxi / wall example?
No. The taxi/wall example was awful.
So is the cost savings in the Hyper-V scenario. I keep bringing up the taxi to show you how bad the Hyper-V example is.
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@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Right now, your suggestion for the CV is not to show success, but to show avoidance of total failure. Don't you see how those are not the same things?
Driving a taxi well, improving over baseline, doing things that aren't just expected as part of "showing up" - that's success in differing degrees.
Not driving into walls, people and lampposts is just "avoiding failure."
We brag about success, we don't brag about avoiding failure.
No, it's to show success, an why it was a success.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
I'm disagreement with you. I'm saying sterile away from something bad to something good is worth bragging about.
Like the taxi. You can't have it both ways.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
Saying that's not good as is should never have been wrong is just bollocks. Things go wrong, showing you can make them go the correct way is important.
This doesn't make any logical sense. It doesn't show that at all. It shows that disaster was avoided. It doesn't show why or by whom. Only that the CV writer wasn't a cause of the disaster. We don't know who proposed the consolidation, why the failure was considered, who made the decision or based on what criteria. It shows nothing positive about the CV writer at all, only that they didn't sabotage the project themselves by refusing to consolidate.
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@jimmy9008 said in Resume Critique:
@scottalanmiller said in Resume Critique:
Right now, your suggestion for the CV is not to show success, but to show avoidance of total failure. Don't you see how those are not the same things?
Driving a taxi well, improving over baseline, doing things that aren't just expected as part of "showing up" - that's success in differing degrees.
Not driving into walls, people and lampposts is just "avoiding failure."
We brag about success, we don't brag about avoiding failure.
No, it's to show success, an why it was a success.
There is no success in the example, only one specific failure avoided. Like I said, if you want to lower the bar for success to that degree - you've created exactly the situation that I hope to avoid - making the CV writer look terrible. The last thing you want in a CV is a "lowering of the bar".
