Land the Tech Job You Love (Pragmatic Life) 1st Edition

I read this book from the perspective of a former developer who's now responsible for hiring and managing developers. Having been on both sides of the fence now I feel confident in saying that Andy's written a book that's great for everyone in the tech industry.The writing here is direct, unintimidating and no-nonsense. Andy knows what geek job seekers need to hear and--more importantly--how to say it so they'll actually listen. At each point he doesn't simply say "do this" but he also includes the oft-overlooked WHY. This sort of insight helps technically-minded folk grok the problem in fullness, allowing them to adapt their approach to the specific company/job at hand rather than simply rattling off canned answers. In essence, he's broken the job-getting process into a set of well-defined use cases, each with fully documented business logic.As I said, this is a book for everyone. As a hiring manager reading this book I constantly found myself thinking of ways in which my own department/company could improve its own hiring and interviewing processes. After reading this book I now feel better prepared to get the right person for our team. It's very obvious that Andy fully understands the hiring managers' point of view. The first time he said (paraphrased), "The hiring manager WANTS to hire you: interviewing for a position is a pain in the ass that she'd rather be done with" I practically applauded. That sort of perspective is necessary to get the point across to the job seeker that we're all in this together.In summary, this is a great book, an engaging read and well worth your time to pick up. I believe so fully enough that I've already purchased it for a friend in need of a change of professional venue.

This book does a nice job of preparing a person for the hiring process. Some useful topics were how to present your work, how to improve a resume, figuring out the job you want, and how to apply for it.In the resume section the author recommends giving an executive summary based on actual accomplishments. Some of the points were common sense, but others were new for me. Many times the author showed what people commonly put on resumes, and then ways to rewrite it so it sounds better.One aspect I found lacking was information on technical questions. There was little information about how to answer technical questions, except to say you should emphasize what you actually worked on. I would have like to see more ways to prepare yourself for technical questions... although I know other books address this more in depth.There was a reasonable amount of useful information in this book for me to be satisfied with the purchase. It is a good starting point for someone who is in the process of applying for a technical job.

This is a great book, especially for the resume advice. Although I'm an experienced developer, my resume hadn't been eliciting much of a response when I applied for jobs. After reading this book and rewriting it from scratch, I landed an interview with a great company immediately. There are tons of "how to get a job" books out there, but this one is very specific to developer jobs and the advice is especially good within that field.

A quick read and full of great advice for the job hunter. A lot of the information is common sense, but nonetheless valuable. It gave me a new perspective on the job hunt, helped me to make some positive improvements to my resume, and most importantly, it helped me to land a great software development job within only a few weeks.

I want to stress, this review is aimed at programmers who, like myself, are relative competent in soft skills but are looking for help navigating and managing the marathon interview processes that are becoming more and more common in the tech community today. There's a few things I can outline as problems I have with this book. Here's a quick summary:*) No discussion of technical interviews, coding puzzle questions, or how to gracefully white board (beyond a brief and perfunctory anecdote which wasn't about programming per se).*) Seemingly outdated perception of the field.*) Bizarrely anachronistic suggestions (sending a thank you note card?)*) Heavy focus on soft skill 'tips', which are primarily opinion.Here's some additional information for context: I'm not sure how common "Google-style" interviews are for sysadmins or other tech professionals, but for a programmer this has been the live or die moment for me in most interviews. I can accept that not every text has to deal with these issues, and Cracking the Coding Interview exists, but in a book about interviews one would expect the practice of multiple all-day screens, tough algorithm puzzles, and heavy degree bias to be mentioned. None of the above really featured, however. Instead, we received generally positive but fundamentally opinionated tips about how to handle social quandries. I can find those tips via a quick Google search.The author makes reference to a number of technologies which, while not defunct, are definitely not cutting edge. While this isn't damning in and of itself, it does lend credence to the overall feeling that the author was out of touch with how interviews are working today. Also of note in that regard were some oddly old-fashioned notions about how to handle certain portions of the process; sending a 'thank you note card' stood out to me. In no hiring process I've been a part of would a thank you note card have been well received by me or anyone else on the committee. We exist in a world that has largely made the physical artifact of correspondence defunct. We should use the tools we've been given, and I would expect a tech professional to both use and prefer those tools.What would have made this book interesting is some kind of data to back up the author's opinion. A survey of even 100 hiring decision makers, interviews of those people, or corroboration *of any kind* would have helped enormously. I might not have truthfully needed the guidance the author was giving me, but at least I wouldn't have been bored.Ultimately, this is not what I expect from premium content, which a book most certainly is. It's also not what I expect out of the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

I much prefer the Google Resume. It's easier to read and has a lot more information. This book has some good suggestions, but not my favorite.

I read Andys book 1 ' years ago while I was studying to prepare me for a later job in the IT industry. After graduating I followed Andys advice to write my CV with stories instead of a big chunk of my skill-bullet list. I wrote my CV in markdown so that I could export in all different formats ' thanks for this advice. I pimped my homepage wikimatze.de with an individual layout and offered on the about page my CV in different versions so that interested people can learn more about me without the need to send my it manually. Except from that, the book contains huge information how you should act in an interview: Tell them stories about the problems and obstacles you solved, take printed source code of your last Open Source projects and tell the people why you love code. It's a piece of reference book that you should consult before going to an job interview. If you are graduate person and want to get into the IT industry I highly recommend you the book. By the way: The author of the book is the creator of the ack tool. Definitely a must read.