Ask HN: I'm not a rockstar coder. Do I have a place in SV?

It's a competitive region.

Honestly, SV is oversaturated and overrated. You're probably going to find far more satisfaction elsewhere. Maybe you'll miss out on the startup scene, depending on where you end up looking, but that's not really a bad thing.

If you're thinking about Silicon Valley because you're already near it, I'd suggest taking a look at something in the Central Valley, like Sacramento. Sac's dead-smack in the middle of California, so you have relatively-easy access to the Bay Area, Tahoe, or what have you to satisfy your desires to explore/travel/run/hike/kayak/etc. (in fact, the Sacramento and American rivers - which intersect in Sacramento - are very popular for kayaking and rafting).

Otherwise, focus on some medium-sized city that looks like it'll satisfy your recreational needs relatively well; chances are, it'll have enough of a tech scene to be able to find steady, meaningful work.

I happen to live near Reno, which is also on the cusp of a tech boom; big industrial projects in the northern outskirts (including - and especially - Tesla's Gigafactory, but also some incumbents like Amazon) will have steadily-increasing tech needs, programming included. The casinos are relying more and more on state-of-the-art technology, and as a result, a lot of casinos and equipment manufacturers alike are gobbling up programmers and tech support in order to fuel the growing demand. Plus, Nevada in general is very business-friendly, thanks to a better-than-average tax and regulatory environment, and Reno in particular is a short drive away from Tahoe, making it really nice for hikers/bikers/kayakers/runners/etc. I'd be surprised if we don't hit critical mass over here pretty soon.

Basically: unless paying for a hyperinflated cost-of-living and clawing your way through hordes of other prospective coders all swarming "The Valley" is your kind of thing, it's rarely worthwhile to think about Silicon Valley specifically when there are plenty of places that could actually use your talents.

Edit your resume. Get your friends to help you, professors, post it here and get hacker news to help (brave!), or even hire a professional service to do it. Find a nice template online and use that. I've seen an astonishing number of astonishingly bad resumes. If you are having trouble even getting a phone screen, it says something about your applications (if you're having trouble in phone screens or during on-sites it says something else).

Some common problems I've seen with resumes:

  - Grammar, spelling and formatting problems.

  - Breadth but not depth - people list a million technologies but don't mention a single thing they did with those technologies.

  - Overly long - some people have a six month stint somewhere and yet write two pages of what they did there, filled with technical buzzwords.

  - Too short - people worked somewhere for three years and yet only write a single bullet point.

  - Unexplained gaps, especially early on. Not necessarily fair, but this can be a red flag for people.

The other trap that I've seen people fall into (less fairly) are technological traps:

  - Someone out of school that only knows one big name language like Java. People interpret this as someone who didn't do much outside of class.

  - Windows-centric developers in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of bias in SV against Windows developers, and someone with a list of Microsoft centric technologies risks coming off as someone who wants to be a Windows systems engineer in shops that mostly run off of Linux and Mac OS.

Finally, in the definitely not fair front is names. My Chinese and Indian friends have reported that by putting a Western first name on the resume their response rates more than doubled.

In that case, yes, there are still plenty of alternatives to Silicon Valley. You've already mentioned Seattle. Portland and Salt Lake City are two more that I happen to know of. Sacramento's tech sector is also already booming (particularly in the area's satellite towns, like Folsom and Elk Grove), making it much less of a gamble than most other areas.