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Ask HN: So I'm being let go
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#72Shot gun it, applied to everything that is close to your roles.
I told two people this when they have no experiences or very little and no degree. It doesn't hurt and they all got jobs now. One is working for Raytheon the other is somewhere else in a hospital hitting 6 fig as Oracle DBA with a business degree.
Make a nice resume and put it out to every job and learn from each interview. If you're interviewing a tons of web dev jobs, you will encounter similar questions, so just learn from the ones you fudge up.
Never give up.
I always thought I'm not smart, but I've worked in the startup industry and most of the time I'm surprise how little my peers know. I've only been to one start up that had a very very good programming team and that startup had the money to spend on very decent programmers.
If you're 30 and wanna settle down don't do start up, it's risky as hell and very ton hours. I wouldn't take magic monopoly money of equity and stocks unless you like lotteries. I would go to established company.
I did php for 8+ years and everybody thinks PHP dev is disposable compare to other like RoR. RoR seems to get higher pay and stabler jobs imo.
I hit my 30 now and I'm going back to school for another skill set, data science (math/stat/ml). Startup burnt me out and it wasn't worth it, I got some exotic skills on my resume, Scala, Python, etc.. but once you hit older. You don't want 70-80 hrs a week, and can be let go any moment.
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#73For one thing, don't describe yourself as a "jack of all trades" because that is associated with "and master of none" in people's minds.
Instead, describe yourself as a "Swiss army knife".
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#74Given the shift in your responsibilities over the years it may be worthwhile to take the effort to put together three or four slightly different resumes, each highlighting a different aspect of one of your prior roles. When submitting a resume select the one that most closely matches the responsibilities outlined in the description. Even if you feel like you're master of none, doesn't mean your resume can't have focu…
This. And even more importantly, a custom cover letter (your email) for jobs where you aren't going through a head hunter.
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#75The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews. These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the curre…
> Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network
Same. Maybe not directly from that meeting, but all of the best offers I've received have come through my network around the local startup scene.
Another bit of advice I give is try new platforms before they're popular. For example, it was easy to get noticed as an applicant on AngelList in 2012-2013. If I were for looking for a dev job today, I'd start with Triplebyte or Hired.
On a related note, I don't believe in job fairs, but I find value in niche job boards. Product Hunt has a nice aggregated list of some of the top remote job lists for example: https://www.producthunt.com/e/find-a-remote-job.
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
(I've had really good luck with LinkedIn.)
Go on ...
I've had good luck with LinkedIn. You get a lot of volume, and the quality is not always great. However, it is easy to sort through it and find good stuff. It isn't a big deal to turn down unappealing offers, right?
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#77[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#78I was recently made redundant. I had a 3 month notice period. In that time, I learnt Python and Django and built https://parsemail.org using it. I also set up https://hireme.grepular.com with a list of my skills. The company who hired me were impressed at my skills list (after they'd questioned me on some of it to make sure I wasn't exagerating). They were also very happy to see a lot of very recent work on Github (p…
Impressive work - but just wanted to say that the FOUC (flash of unstyle content) on your site parsemail is really rough. Cool service though
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#79I've done what you're doing about five times, and it's always exciting and new. I'm 54 with no degree or formal qualifications of any sort, and am currently responsible for all third-party JavaScript and browser extensions at a strong young company in San Francisco.
Free advice: Unless you are planning to specialize in something PHP-based like Drupal, you may want to de-emphasize PHP in your resume and employment history. Start learning Python right now and double down on your JavaScript, since you'll find it on the back end (Node.js) as well as the front end. And never say you're the master of nothing; there is at least one thing that you're the best in the world at, and you have to say what that is and why they should hire you to do it.
If you are not already completely comfortable with git and GitHub, now would be a fine time to start by contributing to open-source projects or starting your own.
Trust your gut when interviewing; if it feels the place is run a bunch of 22-year-old frat boys out of privileged private universities, it's not going to work out well for you.
One successful approach is to look for a situation where women are thriving in engineering roles. Why? Because much of the extra stuff an older individual contributor without a degree will have to do is the same extra stuff that all women face every day.
Re: Ask HN: So I'm being let go
#80The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews. These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the curre…
Likewise. I'm not 30 but at this point I've cracked through a wall where I'm blessed to be surrounded by a large number of contacts who can give me a job should I ask. As a small addendum to this. It's a two way street. I've made a lot of matches between those looking for the job and those looking for someone to fill the job role. Participated in tech meetups in a supportive role (organising, giving talks), and have met and helped startups and other tech people through feedback and the occasional 'introduction' to someone else. This has all generated a large network of people whom I interact with on a casual basis. We don't look at only getting favours from each other. Instead we've become a group of friends that can grab a coffee at any time and chill out as well.
Downside to that. It was NOT overnight.
So with respect to the OP's question and regarding the informational interview approach, there's one thing I have discovered that surprised me. How many acquaintances I haven't spoken with in years are actually willing to jump in and help me if I open up to them asking for it. Pretty amazing that :)