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 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.

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

I know that many people never give 5 stars just on principle and everyone has a different idea about what they correspond to.

I don't care at all what rating my blogs get because I have already formed my own opinion, but then I never would have thought the score would be used by a potential employer.

I am not sure how it could be fixed from the forum's side, but it would be interesting to see if there are good ideas out there.

From the employer's side, there is also clearly a pretty sad failing that could cause them to miss finding good employees.

It sad to hear that you were adversely affected. If you need a recommendation, let me know.

Maybe the forum could have a separate way of endorsing member's skill sets - the way that Linked-In does. I think it could carry more weight than the Linked-In system because you could link a blog that proves the endorsement.

I don't care at all what rating my blogs get because I have already formed my own opinion, but then I never would have thought the score would be used by a potential employer.

I am not sure how it could be fixed from the forum's side, but it would be interesting to see if there are good ideas out there.

When you are applying, it does not matter what this island thinks. You are not the hiring manager of a blogger trying to post good blogs, dougw.

Once you have a 3 star post, company sees it, and the battle is uphill - no matter if it's flagged by someone who posted something relevant in the last decade.

A single person can join this community and influence ratings. It's a big community but that power is in a few person's hand. No matter if they help this community.

All good if you're pensioned. But if you are active in the market this community becomes a liability. For Me.

I flagged this but to no avail. E14 knows it. You were in the conversation.

Element14 mentioned that the star rating is participation, and that members have to deal with it. My way of dealing with it is to avoid posting anything professional here. Because it will get a mediocre rating if I don't blink a LED.

Discuss.

I tried to discuss this before but at no avail. Latest I checked no one is reading my posts anymore. 3 readers on  my last 9 industrial posts.

When you are a top poster here and you receive mediocre acceptation, you have to take it. It's documented at top members.

For me, posting here has resulted in being flagged as a mediocre engineer. Because the (if I'm lucky) mediocrate rating and the "nice start" or "good explanation for a beginner"  comments. 3 stars, 2 stars if I annoyed him.

It's all documented here. Novel ideas, never done before projects.: "Nice Start Jan". Blink a LED in RTOS: 5 stars.

I flagged it to e14: "Eat it Jan - That's how we rule. Part of the participation model"

What next? I'm a professional electronic person, blogging here.

When I apply for a job, I post my projects elsewhere or send a word document summary. I just can't use my 400+ e14 posts anymore because the ratings and the non-industrial-relevant comments.

Let's discuss what blogging here means if you are In The Business.

From the blogger-in-the-industry perspective and element14 perspective: Bring it on. Discuss.

dang. I rarely use the star rating system here.

My criteria would be more along the lines of 5* for anything being useful or helpful, rather than the "5* is only for exceptional work" that some people might use as a standard, which rarely happens. I mean, you took the effort to share - that's worth a lot right there. You're making the world a better place by sharing. Lower ratings should only apply to vague, misleading, false, or dangerous posts.

I'll have to be quicker to rate, to balance out the difficult to please folks out there

e14 is for engineers and professionals. I have an easier conversation when applying by not showing what I do here.

Speaking as someone who hires technical staff, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the hiring process over the last 2 decades, and the shift has not been in a good direction. HR departments now either rely on 3rd party (head-hunter) service agencies or they rely on big on-line repositories like "Indeed" to generate candidates. Head hunters either do not have a very large stable of candidates or they are also relying on external Internet repositories. This makes sense since most candidates are scouring the big repositories for job postings.

In both situations, candidates seem to apply by filling out a form - basically a bunch of check-boxes, or at most, single phrase bullets indicating qualifications.

All candidates get filtered down by looking for keywords and the short list consequently have virtually identical resumes, which consist of a series of bullets.

This process tells me nothing except the candidate has a degree.

In the past 5 years, I reviewed scores of "resumes" and I can't recall a single resume that contained even one complete sentence. No letter of introduction, no paragraph about why they want the position, no description of any accomplishments, zip. Their communications abilities cannot be evaluated from such a resume. Prior to that, all applications included at least a cover letter.

In this era of distancing and Zoom interviews it places a lot of pressure on the interview to tease out who is good at what and it is not necessarily the best candidates who make it through the filter. All it takes is to miss one keyword in your application.

I can see how an HR department might screw up assessment of a blog, since they are usually not technical staff, but if I reviewed a resume that used a blog link as a reference, I would read the blog carefully and the initiative and interest to do projects at home would count significantly, and any star rating of the blog would have zero impact on my assessment. Our HR department would not be likely to look at the blog to see the star rating and wouldn't use it to disqualify an applicant if they did see it. In my case, blogs on element14 would be helpful and the star rating would not be detrimental.

Speaking as someone who hires technical staff, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the hiring process over the last 2 decades, and the shift has not been in a good direction. HR departments now either rely on 3rd party (head-hunter) service agencies or they rely on big on-line repositories like "Indeed" to generate candidates. Head hunters either do not have a very large stable of candidates or they are also relying on external Internet repositories. This makes sense since most candidates are scouring the big repositories for job postings.

In both situations, candidates seem to apply by filling out a form - basically a bunch of check-boxes, or at most, single phrase bullets indicating qualifications.

All candidates get filtered down by looking for keywords and the short list consequently have virtually identical resumes, which consist of a series of bullets.

This process tells me nothing except the candidate has a degree.

In the past 5 years, I reviewed scores of "resumes" and I can't recall a single resume that contained even one complete sentence. No letter of introduction, no paragraph about why they want the position, no description of any accomplishments, zip. Their communications abilities cannot be evaluated from such a resume. Prior to that, all applications included at least a cover letter.

In this era of distancing and Zoom interviews it places a lot of pressure on the interview to tease out who is good at what and it is not necessarily the best candidates who make it through the filter. All it takes is to miss one keyword in your application.

I can see how an HR department might screw up assessment of a blog, since they are usually not technical staff, but if I reviewed a resume that used a blog link as a reference, I would read the blog carefully and the initiative and interest to do projects at home would count significantly, and any star rating of the blog would have zero impact on my assessment. Our HR department would not be likely to look at the blog to see the star rating and wouldn't use it to disqualify an applicant if they did see it. In my case, blogs on element14 would be helpful and the star rating would not be detrimental.

Well said. I'm not a recruiter, but if I were and read blogs I would also be interested in the wealth of information that showed how that candidate conversed in the community. It would soon be obvious what their nature was like for helping others on technical matters and to me that politeness and helpfulness would go much much further than the star rates on here - which I must state I don't use nor do I really bother looking at on my own posts. I think they are anonymous which probably isn't a good thing to ensure good behaviors. Personally if I did feel compelled to use them I'd want the star system changed so the poster has their name, the rating they award and place for comment. Seeing"14RHB gives this 2 out of 5: I liked this project but for me it was too brief and I was unable to follow the finer detail" surely helps that person and gives them a chance to counter...perhaps they have already posted all that detail elsewhere.

That is a good point about anonymous ratings. Ratings would carry far more weight if the rater was known and especially if the reputation of the rater was good.