Saturday, January 3, 2009

Resume Tip From Joel Spolsky

Saturday, January 3, 2009

I’ve reviewed hundreds of resumes over the last few months and I’ve got to agree with Joel Spolsky’s latest resume tip:

When a startup CTO sees a resume that says things like:
 
* Responsible for $30m line of business
* Architected new ERP platform
* Managed team of 25 developers
* Optimized business processes
 
they think, “Spare me, that’s all we need, somebody running around trying to _manage _and _optimize_ and_architect _when we just need someone who isn’t afraid to_write code_.” Here’s the stuff CTOs at startups want to see on a resume:
 
* Single-handedly developed robust 100,000 LOC threadsafe C++ service
* Contributes to OpenBSD file system in spare time
* Wrote almost 75% of the Python code running IsIt2009Yet.Com

A great tip. It’s no coincidence that I’m posting our startup’s developer openings at jobs.joelonsoftware.com.