undefined | Better HN

0 pointskevstev5y ago0 comments

>I'm pretty sure if I showed up to a performance engineering job and said "I wrote the book on performance," as though that was what mattered most, I'd be shown the door. In my opinion it would be horrendously arrogant.

Heh- you are quite accomplished I see from some googling. And I have to be honest, I fail to see how having an Addison Wesley book under your name in any context could be seen as a negative- the guys I was referring to were writing "Learn the MEAN stack in 21 days" type of books. But yeah I of course agree that you don't slam a copy down in the opening of the interview and try to use the fact that your name is on it as your primary selling point- its really more to get you in the door and have people reach out to you about interesting opportunities you might otherwise not have found out about.

You might just be running in much more intense circles than I am, but the number of people who have written a technical book is small enough that I have ran across only a handful in my career and my reaction was much more about surprise and delight than worrying about the motives behind it, but YMMV I guess.

0 comments

brendangregg5y ago

The problem is encountering a hiring manager who treats book writing as a red flag: perhaps the candidate is more interested in self promotion and vanity projects than doing real work; perhaps they are too "academic" and don't have real experience; perhaps their book is one of these trash books that is nothing more than the open source docs (that the author didn't write) hastily thrown together; etc. That's not to say the candidate won't get the job, but that they get grilled harder in the interview to overcome these suspicions.

I only mentioned this in the first place as a counterpoint to the idea that books may have a lot of value in an interview. I think it has value in _getting_ the interview, but you might find the interview is now a little bit harder. And thinking that your book matters most may sound too arrogant.

I have recommended that people write books over the years (I'm not anti-book!): I just wouldn't list the interview as a perk. A big perk is getting to help people worldwide (my books have been translated into other languages), including those who don't have access to bay area conferences or other local experts. Another perk is assembling a technical review team of fellow experts and working on the draft with them, listing to their feedback and learning from their experiences to improve the book.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointskevstev5y ago0 comments

0 comments

brendangregg5y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse