Dan Kim

📍 Chicagoland https://dankim.com/

I truly suck at interviewing

The title says it all – I am so bad at interviewing. It has nothing to do with my skills, experience, or future promise. It's just that if you ask me a question and immediately want a response where I have to recall the details of a situation from

A full stack side project webapp all in Kotlin (KotlinConf 2025)

It's happened to all of us – an idea strikes for a side project and you want to build a quick webapp, but then you remember the state of webdev is still a bit of a mess in 2025. Sure you could pick up one of those "all-in-one&

Eugene catch up (May + June 2025)

It's been VERY hot in Chicago. A true Cubs fan. Look at that smile. 😄 There is no wrong way to eat eggs. There is no wrong way to rest. Lake Geneva sunning. That's just his resting face. The ears. Extreme stretch-sleep edition. Photogenic. He was not

If you're struggling with interviews, there's a decent chance that it's not you

I’ve gone through a few rounds of interviews in 2025 and they've been a stark reminder that your performance in any given interview is max 50% (arguably less) within your control. The rest is on the interviewer and the company. Sure, you can control your prep, your

Ghosting candidates is so weird

I find this “recruiters ghosting candidates” theme / trend to be so odd. I know folks are busier than ever, but it does such a disservice to the hiring company’s image. Seems like spending a few minutes per candidate to follow up is worth every penny of goodwill it will

About those "I've applied to 5,000 jobs" posts you see 🙄

Sorry but I’m not buying these stories from folks who say over the past few months they’ve applied to FIVE THOUSAND jobs and have done it in a fully customized, well-researched way. Just quick back-of-the-napkin math, if over a period of 180 days (6 months) you applied to

You're interviewing the company, too

In a tight job market it’s very easy to forget that not only is the company interviewing you, you’re interviewing the company. Sure, you might need to be a little more flexible than normal, and there is no such thing as a perfect job/company. And yes, of

Doing too much too soon

Against my better instincts, after I resigned from my previous role, I took on way too much way too soon and started interviewing almost immediately. I had a couple weeks to put together an entire talk for KotlinConf, and also knew I had a week of international travel ahead of

Unemployment is a chance to recharge

I don’t want to minimize the anxiety of being unemployed because it IS extremely stressful, but it’s worth remembering that it also provides some rare short-term life opportunities to recharge. You can take care of yourself by slowing down and spending time doing things you enjoy, to do

Interview practice doesn’t work for me

I have no idea why, but I can practice and prep for hours on end, but when it comes to the actual interview, some sort of basic instinct takes over and I go on autopilot. I can rehearse any number of things I should say, but in the moment I