First of all, I want to genuinely thank everyone for their comments on the last post. They really helped me see from an outside perspective. I wouldn't say I was delusional, but I didn't realize how a lot of the achievements I valued weren't that valuable for SWE/IC roles (and didn't scale obviously to other companies). I've edited my resume using almost all of the feedback you gave. I'm sure it's still not perfect (and that some would argue with the "lead" part), but it does feel a lot better. I thought it would be cool if I dropped it here, for the sake of posterity. #engineering #software #swe #resume TC: 150K
CV is not believable. You went from new grad to interim CTO in 1 year?.
If you want to be a SWE, drop that CTO crap immediately. And put your graduation date back in. You look like a 50-something that went back for their degree but still got sucked back into their old executive life.
,😂😂
Similar to you, I held a CTO position at a small company for 2 years and it was hard to explain. I replaced it on my resume and in interviews by just saying Lead Engineer, with description saying I led a team of 5 engineers. If they ask, I tell the truth that I was the CTO and managed 1 intern dev, 2 junior devs, and 2 senior/staff devs. I talk about working directly with the CEO and give them a sense of scope by sharing the company annual revenue and monthly active users while I was there. But if they don’t ask, I just talk about the projects I led and work I personally did, title or no title.
Did exactly the same thing and this advice is spot on. 👋 slack friend! OP, find ways to make your startup experience work for you. The profitability part is impressive. That’s a hard thing to pull off, and I say that speaking from experience at a startup that didn’t make it that far. If people asked I would just say “CTO/lead dev at Startup with x-tens-thousand active users and y-mil in funding raised”. One piece of advice I would give is find a way to make that experience play to your strengths. That background might mean you miss out on learning a lot of the big-tech processes from day one, but it also means you could have a lot more exposure to unique, valuable and hands-on experiences compared to a new grad going straight to FAANG. Find out what those differentials are and highlight the crap out of them. Then be ready to speak to them intelligently and why they can translate to a fresh, yet competent/experienced perspective in a larger enterprise environment. To be clear, not knocking anyone going straight to the big dogs out of school, just trying to help OP highlight a different skill set which can be attractive to the right team. Lastly (and as others might have said already) reword some of those accomplishments. “Responsible for onboarding junior engineers” sounds better than “onboarded two new engineers”. “Refactored business logic and saved 70% on compute costs and query latency” sounds a lot better than “rebuilt 8 firebase functions”. There’s no need to box yourself in to smaller quantities just because that’s what you had to work with. Look at those same principles and instead try to explain how they translate to scalability within a much larger ecosystem. Good luck!
I’d not call you for interview because of what others already mentioned. CEO from new grad is a big turn off. I didn’t even look at rest
I work for Levels fyi, please message me and I can assist
I recruit (employee #15, we’re about 180 now) for a top AI series B in NYC. If you’re willing to relo, let’s connect. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-nguyen-65590b87?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Hey! I do resume critiquing for university students and new grads, I think you have a very strong resume but just need to word it better. DM me and we can setup a call. Just my credentials, I’ve worked at Stripe, Facebook, Uber, Pagerduty and more.
Such a terrible advice for #4
Terrible advice for education, it needs to be at the bottom
Looking at CTO with super little experience, no one would select that resume as everyone would think that you would demand more for pay and given current economic situation, many would not bother to go through interview with such resume.
Exactly! He removed the title as CTO and forgot to remove from description and I was taken aback! CTO at such a short time
Looks a lot better! Noticed you even switched to a gmail. Nice small details. Does soccer really need to be on your resume though? It's not even capitalized
Thanks! Yeah... It doesn't. I got that advice since all my interests were tech-related (which they actually are). I'll probably remove it
Remove onboard 2 new hires part. You were already Lead SWE, mentorship should be your daily work.