https://jasonchestnut.net/tags/career/Recent content in Career on JasonHugoen-usTue, 01 Sep 2026 20:45:47 -0400https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/oops-all-ragtime/Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:45:47 -0400https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/oops-all-ragtime/I built RAG in plain SQL before I knew the term existed. Why structured retrieval beat embeddings for my resume data, and where vectors still fit.https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/screen_test/Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:06:29 -0400https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/screen_test/<p>When is a screen a test? Every time, if your interviewer is good at their job.</p> <p>I was reminded of this recently, when I had a first interview with a company I hadn&rsquo;t spoken with before. Going into this first round, I did the exact thing you should never do when facing the unknown. I made assumptions about the interview based on prior interviews that I had been through. The first screen is never terribly technical, right?</p>https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/how_your_resume_lies/Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:15:59 -0400https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/how_your_resume_lies/LLMs rarely invent your experience. They inflate it one plausible word at a time, until &#34;contributed to&#34; quietly becomes &#34;led.&#34;https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/stop-lying/Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:47:43 -0400https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/stop-lying/<p>The lying resumes had to stop. After enough customizations for enough job descriptions, my resume had started to look like a copy of a copy of a copy: roughly the right overall shape, but not quite recognizable as the same document.</p> <p>As I&rsquo;ve been seeking a new job opportunity this time around, I&rsquo;ve been trying to be selective about where I apply, but also to tailor the resume I submit to highlight how I fit the specifics of each job description. To avoid pulling my hair out, I have also started to rely on an LLM to help. The output typically meets my standards, but one major issue that I&rsquo;ve started to notice is that my repeated modifications had started to introduce a lot of drift from ground truth and had lost the plot. For example, one position working with a large international bank customer had somewhere picked up the location of Toronto, Ontario. I&rsquo;ve been to Toronto exactly once, and I never left the airport.</p>https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/is-it-too-late-for-this/Thu, 28 May 2026 09:53:13 -0400https://jasonchestnut.net/posts/is-it-too-late-for-this/Decades in the industry and no portfolio to show for it. Why I&#39;m starting one anyway, and a plan for anyone who thinks they&#39;ve missed the window.