2026-08-31
I don't think resumes are useless. They're actually pretty useful. In 30 seconds, I can understand where someone worked, what they studied, and roughly what they have done. The problem starts when we pretend that tells us how good they are at building. It doesn't.
Two resumes can look almost identical
Imagine two engineers.
Same university. Same internship. Same React, TypeScript, Python keywords. Both say they built scalable features.
One of them has spent the last two years constantly shipping weird side projects, talking to users, debugging production issues, and trying things that failed. The other has barely built anything outside assigned work.
Those are very different people. The resume makes them look almost the same.
So open the work
This is what I wish more hiring processes did.
If they have GitHub, look at it. If they built a product, open it. If they won a hackathon, ask what happened during the hackathon. If they worked at a startup, ask what they personally owned. If they use Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex heavily, ask how.
The interview becomes much more interesting once there is something real on the table.
AI makes this even more important
It's becoming ridiculously easy to create a good-looking application. You can rewrite your resume for every job. Generate a cover letter. Prepare perfect behavioral answers. Even practice technical interviews with AI.
That means polished presentation is becoming cheaper. Actual building is still expensive.
Someone still had to decide what to make. Debug it. Deploy it. Deal with users. Fix it after everything broke.
That is why I think the work itself is becoming a more important hiring signal, not less.
This is basically why we pivoted DevLabs
We spent years putting builders in rooms together. Hackathons. Hacker houses. Projects. Startup programs.
And founders kept noticing people through the work. Not because someone had the best resume in the room. Because they watched them build.
DevLabs is basically us trying to turn that signal into a hiring product.