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Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#171

Post by wffurr »

su30mki117 wrote: post #161
wffurr wrote: post #160

My first programming job out of school was on really obsolete tech: IBM Unibasic aka Pick Basic in an ERP system. It's a career trap on par with taking a COBOL programming job right out of university: https://medium.com/@csixty4/pick-was-post-relational-before-... I broke out and rebooted my career by quitting and going to grad school full time and getting a Master's degree in CS from a fancier university in a tech h…

Any tips that you can give to someone who is about to finish his Master's when it comes to looking for jobs?

Brush up on your algorithms and whiteboard coding. Tech interviewing is a skill that you can practice and master.

Cracking the Coding Interview, Topcoder, Euler Project, etc. are good places to do this.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#172

Post by komali2 »

beagle3 wrote: post #70
komali2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you ask them why they turned you down, what do they say? Have you tried asking for resume feedback?

It is very unusual for companies in the US to cite any reason for turning down. It doesn't really help them, and while it might be nice and help the rejected candidate, the probability that said candidate will believe he was wrongly turned down and file a lawsuit is just too high for comfort.

It is unusual to come unprompted, but I got feedback 80% of the times I asked.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#173

Post by komali2 »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #62
komali2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you ask them why they turned you down, what do they say? Have you tried asking for resume feedback?

Most of the job ads (Dice, Indeed, etc.) obfuscate the actual company behind a recruiter and no-reply email addresses. I would love to reply and ask, but in 99% of cases the reply email is noreply@somerecruitmentfirm.com. I have talked to a couple of real people, one over the phone and one over email. In both cases I feel like I had a good rapport built. The first guy turned me down because his company only had the b…

What's your timeline here? 100 resume sends over how long a period?

If I can give some unsolicited advice, I would recommend

1. Put your resume on Monster. Hordes of recruiters here will give you a lot of phone calls. 50% will be for bad fit jobs, oh well, sucks for the recruiter, take the call and use it as practice. Maybe they'll get you an interview, boom, interview practice. You might even get an offer this way which you can use as leverage against other positions (or just to add urgency to other applications).

2. Indeed jobs, in my experience, are absolute garbage. I don't waste my time on that site anymore.

3. LinkedIn and Angel.co have the highest quality positions that I could find.

4. Connect to as many people a day on LinkedIn as you are capable of - this will allow you to make more 1st level connections which will then allow you to send more "hey, do you know anything more about this position? I'm looking to apply and want to know what your experience at x company is" type messages.

5. Stack Overflow jobs is a great portal for remote jobs.

6. Those code-test-find-you-job sites I've heard good stories from, can't remember names off the top of my head, sorry.

7. Took me 250 resume sends to get my last job, which led to 30 phone calls which led to 10 code tests / interviews which led to 3 offers. Food for thought.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#174

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #169
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Objects cannot be evaluated and do not have return values. Python would disagree.

Python disagrees with you. Given a python script with a single class. If you instantiate an object and try to "call" or "evaluate" it: class A(object): def __init__(self): pass x = A() x() you get this output to stderr: Traceback (most recent call last): File "python_temp.py", line 6, in x() TypeError: 'A' object is not callable Of course you can mess with the callable magic method, but that's more of a trick then a…

> Of course you can mess with the callable magic method, but that's more of a trick then a standard.

Implementing a __call__ function is indeed what I was referring to.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#175

Post by danschumann »

I don't think it's a good idea for people like me..

I'd rather try to figure out a way to make my career (my skills) fun again. And find a way to get curious.

Or, to expand slightly past my skillset ( like management ), and learn that skillset, but as a superset of my existing skills.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#176

Post by thisiswilson »

hemling wrote: post #152

47 here. I drove my career into a dead-end. Always been a generalist. Tried many times to do startups and saas products. It never got me anywhere. Between my projects, I worked as a freelancer, while living in many different countries. I took anything I could get. Earned enough money, then tried again. I have broad work experience, but nothing deep. Started a family late in life (with 44). Now I feel my career is a d…

I'm only 30, but I feel the same way. I've just never been interested in keeping up with the latest tech, I just like to get things done with the tools that work. PHP, JQuery and WordPress still work. I'm a generalist as well and have held positions or have done a fair amount of work in most areas of marketing in my 9 years in the industry.

I think your idea of teaching and doing corporate training is the right direction. You could then take your lectures and record those and build courses on those. That's how you create that content-momentum and spend less time building, thereby improving your ROI.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#177

Post by [deleted] »

Liuser wrote: post #76
_diyu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only 32 but that's kind of where I'm at right now too. Mastered Objective-C and Mac & iOS development 10 years ago, now it's all Swift and nobody's really hiring for iOS devs in my area (Chicago suburbs), and nobody's hiring for native Mac developers anywhere, period. And all the best practices in iOS have changed drastically since then, too, in terms of both coding and UX. Learned Ruby on Rails 8 years ago, but…

When you get into technology, you should go under the assumption that you will be a student for the rest of your life. Otherwise you will get left behind. My Dad is in tech (I followed his footsteps). For as long as I can remember growing up he always had a book with him in his free time. He started with punchcards.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#178

Post by NumberCruncher »

Everyone should read

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

Tl,dr: do not be the guy who writes code in x language for y bucks / hour and applies to vacancies online. Be the guy who generates business value and talks to people in the industry. Start doing it today!

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#179

Post by LBarret »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #137
fizx wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an over complicated term for a really trivial pattern in development. Yes, but... The objective of most business-oriented programs is to create the One True Function(tm), usually known to developers as a the "application." For everyone's sanity, this should be composed of smaller functions, which are sometimes called "objects." An object is just a function that was created using a specific creation template, u…

Objects and functions are different. An object retains state, a function should be stateless. Objects cannot be evaluated and do not have return values.

I think conflating data structures and objects is bad, and muddle the discussion. An app is mostly a pipeline of functions over an initial data structure.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#180

Post by josephgrossberg »

szermer wrote: post #124

I started out doing telephone technical support 20+ years ago. After the bubble in 2000 I moved back to NYC to work with my dad as a Private Investigator. I did that for 8 years until I realized I was too young for that life. I applied to only one grad program (RISD) because their ID program sounded interesting and I wanted to get into the design world. Focusing on only one school made it a challenge and allowed me t…

As someone who just found himself 41 and jobless, I found this a great perspective on things. TY for sharing, especially that advice paragraph!
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