21–28 of 28 posts
If you can program your way out of a paper bag, you're good enough to land an 80k job in SF at the moment. People whose entire programming careers are measured in weeks are hireable in the current environment, for at least some engineering roles, at at least some companies.
Another option is to write little apps, maybe for iOS or Android, and sell them on their respective stores. It probably won't be a significant source of income (it never was for me, so I gave up on it) but who knows, it could go viral.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Approximately every company in the Valley which has 10+ engineers is currently hiring more engineers. Do you need an introduction? Email me with anything that demonstrates programming ability. I'll recommend a few folks to talk to.
They may be hiring, but they're not getting back to me. I've applied to yahoo, google, twitter, mozilla, facebook as well as 30 smaller companies. Some aren't hiring people unless they have many years behind a specific skill set (Twitter), others haven't gotten back to me or rejected my application for different reasons (Didn't go to prestigious enough school, haven't worked anywhere with 1 million users, they wanted…
The HN jobs thread has many jobs, did you check the monthly postings?
By the way 30-40 is not a lot of companies to apply. I have friends out of Harvard & MIT that regularly apply to 60-70 places.
Another option is to write little apps, maybe for iOS or Android, and sell them on their respective stores. It probably won't be a significant source of income (it never was for me, so I gave up on it) but who knows, it could go viral.
What apps did you make?
- AppGrid, a simple GUI-configured window manager for OS X 10.7+, predecessor to Zephyros
- DeskLabels, lets you put labels on your desktop so you can label groups of icons
- Mail Ping, pretty much a clone of Gmail Notifier, but works with multiple gmail accounts
- LoginControl, lets you reorder your login items in Mac OS X 10.5
- Docks, an Mac OS X 10.5 app that let you swap out the apps/documents in your dock quickly (featured in MacWorld magazine a few years ago, leading to the only month I had any real sales)
- TunesBar, showing your iTunes song in your menu bar; now integrated into Bahamut[1]
- QuickApps, icon in your menu-bar that gave you quick mouse-based access to all your apps
- QuickTimer, a simple microwave-style timer for your desktop
- TiltRecall, an iPhone OS 3 simon-clone based on tilting your iPhone
(I'm probably forgetting a few.)
I've since open-sourced many of these apps. The repo[2] was forked a lot, and then I deleted my own repo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Approximately every company in the Valley which has 10+ engineers is currently hiring more engineers. Do you need an introduction? Email me with anything that demonstrates programming ability. I'll recommend a few folks to talk to.
They may be hiring, but they're not getting back to me. I've applied to yahoo, google, twitter, mozilla, facebook as well as 30 smaller companies. Some aren't hiring people unless they have many years behind a specific skill set (Twitter), others haven't gotten back to me or rejected my application for different reasons (Didn't go to prestigious enough school, haven't worked anywhere with 1 million users, they wanted…
A few of these points might be obvious to you. I apologize if they are.
1. Understand and separate (mentally) the process of interviewing at a company and your own self worth as a person working in technology. You not hearing back from a company is a function of so many latent factors that you are going to go crazy if you try figuring those out. Another poster below pointed it out but yes applying to 30 places is not a lot. I still remember one summer when I applied to 150 places and didn't get a single internship offer. Life goes on, though.
2. Understand that interviewing is a skill. If I only read HN, I would think that interviewing was all about tweeting, blogging and github. Sure, those things matter. Having a very well updated linkedin/social media/github profile helps. The right balance has to be struck between putting meaningful things that make sense to an Engineer and keywords for recruiters. More importantly go brush up on the basic stuff: data structures, algorithms etc. Almost every company, irrespective of their cool chops, asks you ritualized questions on graphs or whatever before they let you join their club. Depending on your particular tolerance to their brand BS, you may find one of the following ( pair programming, some absurd project that you are supposed to work on in your spare time, presentations etc) enjoyable or not.
3. Getting your resume infront of a hiring manager at a big company is about networking more than applying through their black hole system. Go network, Sir. That girl that you had a drink with six months back who now works at Apple; talk to her about getting your resume in the system etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Approximately every company in the Valley which has 10+ engineers is currently hiring more engineers. Do you need an introduction? Email me with anything that demonstrates programming ability. I'll recommend a few folks to talk to.
They may be hiring, but they're not getting back to me. I've applied to yahoo, google, twitter, mozilla, facebook as well as 30 smaller companies. Some aren't hiring people unless they have many years behind a specific skill set (Twitter), others haven't gotten back to me or rejected my application for different reasons (Didn't go to prestigious enough school, haven't worked anywhere with 1 million users, they wanted…
Email me your resume (check my profile) and I'll either put you in touch with a hiring manager or let you know why. I can assure you up front that we don't hire based on school prestige or previous company size. While we like to hire referrals, we can't get nearly enough to fill all open positions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They may be hiring, but they're not getting back to me. I've applied to yahoo, google, twitter, mozilla, facebook as well as 30 smaller companies. Some aren't hiring people unless they have many years behind a specific skill set (Twitter), others haven't gotten back to me or rejected my application for different reasons (Didn't go to prestigious enough school, haven't worked anywhere with 1 million users, they wanted…
I second the idea to add your email to your profile. I have an email I'd like to send you.
Hey mate, This is not reliable, might be low if you are on a 6 figure incom and it might not be good where you live (I live in Aus) but try look up research panel/focus group recruiters in your city - I work in Market Research and we generally pay $50-100 per hour, online surveys through these groups can be good too (~$50-60 per hour) (A LOT better than doing them through online based agencies.) For those in Perth, W…