CSC295.02 2013S, Class 02: Jeff Dickey-Chaisins '81 Overview: * Introducing Jeff Dickey-Chaisins '01 * Talk: Learning through diverse careers * Advice for current students * Q & A Admin: * Negotiating next week's visitor took longer than I expected. Anna Carey '03 will visit us via Skype. I'll put Nathalie and Kate in touch with her asap. * For those of you who aren't seniors, the CS faculty are talking about their summer research projects this Thursday at 4:30. * And don't forget tonight's Microsoft visit. Bring your resumes. Get free pizza. Intro * Sam rambles Jeff graduated in '81 with English degree * Let him go abroard * Was interested in What he's done * He's been a writer. Gotten paid for writing and also wrote fiction that * More stuff than I keep up with * Currently an entrepreneur/self-employed * Consults with sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. to help them make more money, build new products, etc. * Companies are all over the world. * Primarly, but not exclusively, English-speaking * ??? recruiting boards, a few billion in revenue * Not trivial, but a small fraction of the overall recruiting Lots of things to talk about * Technology * Career path His dad was a doctor, and knew his career path once he was 14 and followed that path. Jeff, in contrast, didn't know what he was going to do, even when he graduated Grinnell. And he graduated in 1981, at the worst recession since the 1950's (until know). But got a job in publishing in New York where they gathered abstracts of articles on lots of topics. He had to read the articles and wrote the abstracts - he had to learn them and write about them. He said "Hey, I can write. Why don't I write?" Freelance writer of articles on robots and genetics. But freelance writing didn't pay well. Ended up writing technical safety sheets - challenge to write about technical things to make it interesting and still make it legal. Went to U Washington career center. Did skills inventory. (As a Grinnell student, he thought they were silly. He has since found that they are very accurate at predicting what you will enjoy and what you will do well at. His wife has data to suport their accuracy.) The inventory said that he should be in marketing and sales. "I want to work for a rapidly growing and expanding company that has something to do with technology. I want to be their marketing director in three years." - "It made no sense, but I had nothing to lose." Robert Ward, one of the founders of C, was publishing a magazine on C. He was making money, but wasn't really sure what to do. Launched magazines for Windows developers, then for Unix developers. Kept adding things - seminars, etc. Big growth: From half-million per year to $15 mil per year company. Got to use the whole range of his skills - writing, editorial process, problem-solving (running a company is nothing but solving continual problems). Also the dawn of online communication. Ran the whole company off of one 286 computer - 16 terminals, etc. Then the company was sold to a big multinational - Dr. Dobbs. A lot to happen in eight years. Burned out a bit. Spent a few years staying home taking care of his daughter. Good - rewarding. Bad - people said "Why did you take two years off." LESSON: Explain the gaps in your resume creatively. Came to Grinnell. Found he was unemployable. (A bit surprised.) Went around looking for an entrpreneurial company. SUGGESTION: Work for an entrepreneurial company / startup. It challenges you, it stresses you, it makes you do a lot of things outside of your comfort zone. A place in Des Moines called Dice hired him as marketing director. "We've never really marketed ourselves." He was 9th employee. In 3 years, went from revenues of $6 mil/year to $75 mil/year. Then sold to EarthWeb. Jeff: "You can market to programmers the same way that you can market to regular human beings." And once they realized that, everything blew up on the site. ("The first time we ran a radio campaign, it took the server down.") Then worked on marketing e-learning system oreiented toward medium to large corporations that have to do with sexual harassment training and other similar kinds of training. IMPORTANT SKILLS: * Writing: "If you can write, you can be employed anywhere. Most technologists can't write. If you can do both, you have an unlimited career path." * Persuasion: Think about problems. Think about sides. Find a way to communicate. In your entire career you'll be working in teams, trying to get projects done, reach goals, etc. You may not be able to practice, but you need to be aware of it. * Analyze: Problem-solving 101. You think that everyone can look at a problem and break it down into constituent parts, but that's not true. Worked with lots of MBAs and such that couldn't do that. In addition, technology kept growing at a rapid rate after he graduated. The first horrible class in programming made him not scared of technology. BEST CAREER ADVICE HE RECEIVED: * When you're done with each job, make a list of what you liked and did not like about the job. For example, if you learn that you don't like a boss who is a micromanager, then that's something you should ask potential employers about (not directly, but ask about management style) ADDITIONAL ADVICE: * Make sure to interview your interviewer/company. It increases the odds that you'll find a job that you like. * Use a reader - a program that gathers lots of sources of information and helps you categorize them. E.g., he uses it to tie together the fifty or so 'blogs he reads. Takes some of the randomness out of what's going on in the market. * Develop a network. Internships. LinkedIn. * Use publicially accessible collaborative tools - e.g., stack overflow and GitHub (BitBucket, etc.). They have programs that look at what's happening on the site. Helps recruiters get a hold of you. * Have some public presence of what you're doing, even if it's a 'blog. It's a good idea for your brain to have people cross-checking you. It's a good idea for your career. * Don't chase money. There's an awful lot of money flying around in certain parts of the country, but don't focus on that. (After all, $150K/year doesn't go very far in SanFran.) * Do jobs that you do for satisfaction, not for money. * Be willing to take on risks now. You can take on more risks now than you will for the rest of your life. Over the next 3-5 years, the things you do screw up now have fewer long-term consequences than other times in your life. * Expect unexpected things to happen. * Be clear with yourself why you're taking on a post-graduate degree. Don't just do it because you're on some track. Some specifics about job hunting * Use publily-available sites for code sharing and collaboration. * github and bitbucket are the big two * Be active - Even if you don't code, you can comment. * stackoverflow has the highest visibility * Companies pay stackoverflow for grades of people * caggle - coding contests (it's about the contest, but it's also about * "People like me are going to hire you. I have no way to evaluate whether you are a good or bad technologist. Some companies have the IT folks do the hiring, but most don't. So I need some independent third voice telling me that Jane is a good or bad programmer. A way to validate yourself. A BA from Grinnell won't validate you." * Even if you don't think you want to go work for a startup, you should take a look * startuply.com * startuphire.com * angel.co - designed for investors, but also has a jobs section * Good because it's huge * ventureloop * Think about the startup culture in Des Moines * codeeval.com is a site that evaluates people's code for HR. Will give you a sense of how people will react to your code. * It looks like they have competitions too * Don't forget to check out dice. But 75% of hires come from networking and referral. If you have two hours per day for job search, spend 30 minutes on job boards and ninety minutes contacting people. Use Google Alerts - give it a search string and it pops up info on that thing every N time units. (E.g., when a company gets funding, they are likely to start hiring). --- Three technologies that have transformed business. Note: Living through the Web transition was really interesting. And we're probably still in the early days of the Web. And the Web changed (and is continuing to change) the way business is done. Mobile is another big thing, and we're at the front end of that. (About 35% of the traffic on Jeff's site is mobile traffic. Job boards get as much as 55-60% of their traffic through mobile devices.) Designing sites that work smoothly across platforms. Social media (even though Jeff scoffed at it for years). Changes in technology with behavior has changed things - what people think they can do and how people behave. (Don't know how that will play out in the world of recruiting, but it's likely to be interesting.) Idea: You're leaving trails of data behind you - it should be possible to gather that information and use it and recruit more effectively. Clearly a big data problem. You will get personal profiles created of you without your control. ---- Questions for Jeff * "Did you get any equity in the companies you worked for?" * "I got equity in Dice, but they went bankrupt." * Gets lots of offers of work for free and get equity in the company. That didn't work so well. * "Do you ever use FlipBoard?" * "No, I get used to the reader I'm using. I use feedly, and I'll keep using it until it stops working right. Evernote has proven somewhat useful" * "How do you feel about students contacting you for networking?" * Feel free to connect to me via LinkedIn. * Do an informational interview with the alum, probably via email. * Most alums are pretty open about it, as long as you don't become a pest. Treat them as an information source, not as a someone who will recommend you. * Don't focus on the most famous alums, look for people who have interesting jobs that might be relevant. * You need to train yourself to network, even if you're not an introvert. * "You've mentioned social media throughout your presentation. How do you get started on that, particularly if you're an introvert? How do you find things that others will be interested in?" * "Find something that you're really passionate about and participate in conversations. If you find particular technologies really interesting." * TweetDeck to keep track of things that he's focused on, then inserts himself into conversations that he finds relevant. * Gets him jobs, but also gets him friends that he then sometimes meets in person. * It's very egalitarian. If you want to get involved and you're very smart, they'll care about what you're saying. * It takes awhile. Sometimes you just lurk. * How do you insert yourself into a conversation? * TweetDeck * One column: Anyone you're following * One column: Anyone who follows you * But rest are search strings - something fairly narrow. S * Pulls up TweetDeck and skims it * Brings up tweets that are interesting * Looks up people * How do you get yor clients? * Mostly through contacts or people who've seen him online * Sometimes initiates contact with "Here's my 'blog, you might find it interesting."