Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?

I was made homeless and had my financial support dropped at the beginning of the year, and am currently staying in squats etc in the Netherlands. I have nearly no income - 10 euros a week in donations towards an open-source project I'm working on to build a live video streaming platform for the fediverse, and occasional requests for solidarity funds.

My situation is... not great. Half my time is taken up by anxiety around police violence, illegal evictions, my friends being arrested. Still, in the immediate term, it's better than sleeping rough.

I'm not sure how to find work; I've not had a paying job in the last 8 years. I've worked on software for myself and others in hackerspaces and the like; and helped run a volunteer cafe for a large portion of last year (sinking 20+ hours a week into that fairly consistently), but I can't seem to even turn that into an actual paying cafe job. I go through bursts of sending dozens of applications a week to anything that is vaguely relevant to anything I've done in the past, and receive... mostly nothing in response.

I don't know what's wrong with me. All I want is to make enough money to survive. I'm going to be dead in a few months if I can't work something out.

Does anyone have any advice, at all?

I can't really relate; although I grew up in poverty and understand that aspect of things and it took me a very long time to get my first job (and, even my second job actually).

Does anyone ever give you feedback on why they are not hiring you? It's possible that it's something small but people are reluctant to give negative feedback if it doesn't benefit them to do so.

If I were in the same situation as you (IE; very little industry experience as an employee) I might consider leaning heavily on my github profile, make sure it's as polished as possible, figure out the key things you enjoy working on and then make it appear as if you do those things often. -- Finding bugs in lots of software is a great way to get your activity boxes to light up dark green!

Hiring managers (I speak from experience as I am responsible for hiring peers, though not as a manager) love to see something clear and consistent. So if you're a dabbler it might be more tricky to convey competence. Try to find a focus area; contribute to, or build something with a clear singular purpose (like saltstack or grafana)

Second is to get as many eyes from technologists on your profile, your CV, whatever. Feedback will go a long way. You can find people on freenode (or here) to do this.

Third I would look for companies _outside_ of my local country, because:

  1) they will over some kind of relocation package (which might be monetary)
  2) they will pay for flights/hotel on the last stage of interview
  3) they will likely find accommodation for you if you get hired.
  (for 3-6months while you get on your feet).

Cafe's are obviously your friend when interviewing. But getting your foot in the door is probably the hardest thing.

FWIW; my studio is hiring relatively aggressively and we're based in Malmo, Sweden.

The relocation package is reimbursement for expenses and 6months of living in our apartments, in general the people working in the studio care about competence not experience, you just need to get around the HR filter somehow.

https://www.massive.se/career/

2. Keep applying to jobs. Don't give up on that. Something will work out.

3. In the interim, have you considered doing some freelance work via Upwork or something similar? The pay will likely not be great, but it'll be a hell of a lot more than 10 Euros / week, and can grow as you build a client-base.

Now your boss will ask you to write more reports for HIS boss, and suddenly you are employed as a programmer. If you like that job, keep it, or leave for somewhere else that will hire you with a more appropriate programmers salary.