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Real Life

A good family friend has a kid in high school who is a very good programmer. Over the years, it has fallen on me to "navigate" T given his interests. His parents are non technical and feel a bit lost. While tasked with helping T pursue his technical passions, I have tried to draw him out of the narrow confines of his geek universe to see that possibilities exist everywhere he is not looking. His grades have never been great and as he skills up as a programmer, he feels his work is real and the silliness of school is not relevant to him. Recently, I started to help him with looking for a summer job. Going into this project, I had assumed this would be easy. T's resume is very targeted - it's clear he has some great skills that many companies would pay good money for. A resume bot would be able to identify all the keywords that make him a good intern candidate. 

I was naïve enough to believe that posting his resume online would trigger bunch of interest and if he applied to enough jobs he would have multiple options for summer. It turns out I was sadly mistaken on all counts. Development has become far more commoditized than I remember from back in my day. It is not nearly as hard to develop a decent level of competence so the entry level is teeming with candidates who are self-taught or went to some bootcamp. There is no real foundation on which this programming experience stands. What I have come to realize, that the companies that have a strong intern pipeline are looking for people who they can hire once they graduate college. The employer needs to see just about every sign that this student would make a great hire. So credentials matter and grades most certainly do. Just being a great programmer is not a ticket for admission. 

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