Ask HN: I’ve been applying to a million jobs

Pretty bad advice for a developer.

Being generalist is a good thing in the sense that is good to have many skills at a reasonable level. Unless you're truly exceptional, it simply doesn't happen without lots of experience. At 20 years of experience, you can have e.g. 5 "secondary" skills (in addition to whatever key specialization you might have) where you have a reasonable knowledge and "exposure" from having applied them multiple times.

At 3 years of work experience, most people have just started to understand 1-2 things. It may be that you have gotten a great, wide experience at a young age, because you started to do hard things really early - if a junior person claims that they "know" many diverse skills, maybe they truly are a generalist, but it is so much more likely that this simply shows a so big gap in knowledge/understanding that they don't even understand how little they know about all these 'secondary' skills.

This is true at least personally - there are certain skills where 15 years ago I believed that I had them, however now I know that I don't and never did so, simply because now I have seen people who actually do have that skill and can evaluate my knowledge in appropriate context.

The ego on HN gets me every time. I quite like his designs.

Ok, this is a great question (I've faced the same problem as a generalist at times over my career), and I've loved almost every comment.

First, let's look at the situation we find ourselves in the tech industry. Everyone is interviewing, but "no one" is hiring. Companies are reporting they hire less than 1% of applicants (http://davidlynch.org/blog/2011/07/hiring-developers/). He probably wasn't the first to mention it but Joel Spolsky's post(s) about recruiting, where he talks about how one bad hire can seriously injure a company had a terrible effect; companies now look for any excuse not to hire you. The vast majority won't invest a nickel into training you either, you're supposed to hit the ground running.

While there's some truth to the point about bad hires, showing them the door quickly is one of the responsibilities of management. It happens---deal with it and move on. The reverse strategy however, avoiding a bad hire at all costs, (to the extent that you toss aside multiple good candidates in the process) is a recipe for disaster as well. Unless you've got nine months to wait for Mr/s. Perfecto to walk in. The result of which has been nothing short of the so-called "tech-shortage."

The point I'm getting at is that you need to remove all the barriers to getting hired. Spolsky does have one great post on the subject: (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/03/strategy-letter-ii...) on how to remove the barriers that prevent people from choosing your product (in this case you). In short, you knock them down, one by one.

Regarding your website, I liked the starkness and the font, but am a geeky outlier. (I'm tired of the cookie-cutter websites that everyone agrees are professionally designed these days. The round photos are especially grating.) The only thing I didn't really like were the "@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@"'s, removing them made it feel less cluttered.

The point I'm trying to make though, is that your site is edgy and polarizing and does not help when you are looking to sell yourself, it cuts your audience by 50% or more. Just like in the old days you had to support IE6, you'll probably have to "dumb" the site down to be more accessible to current design thought.

Next, if you want a job with the title "Product Designer," your last job must be of the title, "Product Designer", sad but true. This means you need to convince your current employer to let you move to a new career not the next one. You do this by being valuable, but not irreplaceable---document your work. Focus on one thing until you get hired. Front-end dev might be a better match given your interests, learn Angular and React to a passable degree. This will open the floodgates to many more jobs.

Finally, figure out how to work in the US without a visa if you can, that's a huge barrier. Don't mention being based in Paris unless framed as temporary.

There are probably more barriers, which you'll find mentioned through out this page, knock them down too. And now off to follow some of my own advice ;).

From what I can tell you have a few things going against you.

1) You haven't worked anywhere I've heard of. Means I don't know if you've got "new-hire issues" around showing up on time, writing professional emails, etc.

2) You seem suited for a UX Designer position, but you're aiming for a more senior product role. If I were you, I'd go for a UX Design job at an agency or company that people have heard of (or with clients people have heard of) so you can add those to your resume. (It's not bad to know some code to do UX Design, just like it's not bad to know some design if you want to be a developer -- but understand that most teams are split so people can specialize and thrive at what they are each good at. College is about learning broad topics, but for work you'll have an easier time finding a job if you pick something with high demand and specialize in it.)

3) You're looking for jobs in NYC when you are in Paris. General rule, you have to be where you want to find a job. Your search will be 10x harder at least doing it from another city.

4) I don't see any links to LinkedIn -- always nice when new-hires have recs posted so I can read what others say. Get a LinkedIn page and get some recs. There's nothing about your education even on your web page...

Good luck finding a job, it takes time and patience. If you aren't applying "right" you'll end up spinning your wheels going after things you won't land. In time you narrow down what you are good at, how to sell your skills... it does get easier.