What inspires you to make?

I voted for "I think the making experience will help my career"

It may not. But almost every post I submit is written with the premise that it will be relevant to industrial practice.

I voted for "I think the making experience will help my career"

It may not. But almost every post I submit is written with the premise that it will be relevant to industrial practice.

I think making has helped my career in many ways, including helping to land jobs.

A by-product of making is writing proposals on element14, which enable making.

This is a very useful business skill to have and element14 proposals help hone that skill.

I'm a prolific blogger and learner, doing formal training.

After doing many of these things in parallel for a decade now , I learned that:

• doing formal trainings
• volunteering in the company,
• taking professional risks
• changing company
• getting out of the comfort zone and
• getting certified

has helped in every step of my career.

Up till now, publishing and blogging did not do anything to progress my career. It has been a blocker at times because being a public person is a risk.

Blogging would not have helped me at work either although I did blog about the interesting locations where I was stationed at times. Upon retirement I became interested in electronics but was reluctant to blog about that because while electronics were critical in the work I did most of the technicalities were not my direct responsibility or background. Fortunately people who are more knowledgeable than me tolerate this and as an enthusiast I have benefited tremendously from the feedback my blogs sometimes get. I have also benefited from reading posts from you and others who do these things professionally. Please continue. :-)

That is interesting.

I have taken or been forced to take many on-the-job courses, which helped a bit, but not enough to get a promotion. (Most were not technical courses)

I tend to test things at home that I am interested in from work, (when there is no appetite at work to spend time investigating) so this often has a direct benefit at work and has even led to patents, which look good on a resume. I don't blog about work-related research I do.

I am not sure about whether blogging helps one's career - I guess it depends on the job requirements.

dougw  wrote:

 

I am not sure about whether blogging helps one's career - I guess it depends on the job requirements.

Promoting your (off-time) project works.

My experience is that when you show self-made projects when applying, they are a great asset.

Blogging on E14, RS Components and on the Ti community, and using that as an asset -  in my career - was a negative power that I had to defend in interviews.

One of the reasons is that almost all of my blogs on element14  have 3 out of 5 stars,

I showed an electronic load I built here and the hiring partner said that it was not relevant because 3 stars and "good effort'" comment on element14.

While I was in the e14 top member community I flagged this,.

My balance after being here for many years is that it hampered my career.

When I negotiate without mentioning my online persona, these things don't play a role.

That electronic load was a great project - way better than 3 stars.

I am surprised that anyone would judge it solely on star rating, when the whole blog is there.

The fact that you did that project on your own time is a better testament to your capabilities and attitude than any paper resume.

That's not how the world rolls, Douglas. 3 stars in the new millennium gives a fail.

I stopped posting things that matter here because of that. I only post flashing leds these days. Just like when this community started. My 3 star posts are a liability instead of an asset. I flagged i while I was a top member. I did not like the answer so I accepted it and left that area.

Things I use for my professional career, I post on other places. This community burned me.

Jan Cumps  wrote:

 

One of the reasons is that almost all of my blogs on element14  have 3 out of 5 stars,

I showed an electronic load I built here and the hiring partner said that it was not relevant because 3 stars and "good effort'" comment on element14.

That is awful.  I have never received benefit from the star rating system. The stars don’t correlate to the quality of the work, I always get 3 or 4 with no rationale, and so they have no useful purpose. Fortunately they don’t impact my retirement and I can ignore them.

I flagged it in the public and top member area. I believe that e14 has representation in both areas and replied to me in both areas.

Jan Cumps  wrote, in a few different comments...

 

>My experience is that when you show self-made projects when applying, they are a great asset.

>Blogging ... was a negative power that I had to defend in interviews.

Thanks for that valuable insight, Jan Cumps, I would have thought the exact opposite!

I wonder if the same applies to public Github repositories.

> changing company

I've noticed that too - the first company I worked for especially continued to treat me as the fresh-out-of-university developer they hired, even though I had nearly 7 years of direct-to-their-product experience that no other employee there had. When I was let go (economic downturn), my next job paid TWICE what they had been paying me! Yikes, why didn't I leave sooner?

The problem is though, that I have found it difficult to find new jobs to switch to, possibly due to being a remote employee (since 1999), which was not a cool thing to do before 2020.

Maybe I need a good course in interview jargon

Best,

-Nico