I'm a senior Computer Engineering student and I have 2 years of experience working as a Software Developer, mostly J2EE. I've been looking for work for a couple of months and it seems to me that most of the work out there is for Sr. Level/Ninja/Guru people and I'm finding it hard to find a new place for me to grow with. Has anybody here been in a similar situation? How did you do it?
Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#2There's all sorts of levels of skill in the market. You need to demonstrate your skills first - either an open source project or host an SVN with some example code. There is no harm in writing a place looking for a senior dev, they often have other openings. I hope you're already checking dice.com ....
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#3The answer is persistence. Check Craigslist/eng/ in all major metro areas - chicago, nyc, sfbay, austin, lax, wdc. Email promising job ads daily. Post your resume on craigslist, especially in SFbay, weekly, and alternate with other metro areas. I would be shocked if you did not get at least a few promising leads after a few weeks of hitting up the craigslist rotation.
in the meantime, code up something cool, and post it on HN. Then in your signature or whatever, mention that you're looking for work.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#4Spend some of your time building something real. Nothing demonstrates that you can perform like envisioning, building, and launching a product that real people are willing to pay real money to acquire.
It doesn't have to be particularly big or complicated, either. Just proving that you can accomplish the aforementioned tasks will go a long way to getting you through the door.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#5Work on an opensource project that fits into your area of interest. Build up your expertise in all areas of development, especially your ability to work with a distributed team of developers. Learn debugging skills (they don't teach this in school).
Support people (users and other developers) on mailing lists and forums related to the project you're working on as well as the areas of technology that you have some experience with (note, you don't have to be an expert, just interested). Work on your page rank, so that when someone searches for you on the web, they see several pages worth of problems that you helped someone fix. For this same reason (among others), never be rude or overly sarcastic on a forum. Be helpful, and if you can't be helpful, be attentive.
In the course of doing all this, you'll sometimes come across people who work at companies looking for young hotshots (hint, that's you) or reliable developers (hint, that's also you) or an experienced programmer with an eye on customer satisfaction (yep, you again). Don't ask them for a job, but hint to them that given the right conditions, you may be open to a more permanent technical exchange.
Now if you're active enough, you can get this all done in a couple of months. When I graduated from college, my resume already had two pages of projects that I'd played a primary role in. This helped.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#6The big companies like Google and Amazon are hire lots of entry-level people, since they have the time and resources to train them. It's a decent way to get experience if you can get it. (My first "real" software engineering job was at Amazon.) The interviews are tough and there's a strong chance of getting rejected even if you're good; follow the other advice on this page and also study up on both CS theory (algorithms, complexity, networking, OS/architecture) and programming practice.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#7Honestly, it helps to know someone who is looking to hire.
Persistence/experience/credentials are important, but without a personal connection the job market (in any profession) is a crap-shoot.
My girlfriend had a similar situation (she's not an engineer), she finally managed to get a job by doing an internship, all the while applying to a ton of jobs. (Of course all of them were looking for 5+ years experience and a masters).
She was rejected a lot and it was demoralizing for her.
But what paid off were the personal connections that she made during the internship and interviews (she made a good name for herself), eventually one of her acquaintances gave a colleague her resume (who then offered a job).
I'm not really a people person, so I know that this can be a difficult road for us introverted folk, but I think the best thing to think about is 'where can I meet people who would be looking to hire someone like me'.
Then go to those places, meet those people, and get them on your 'team'. Eventually you are a proven commodity and are able to get something.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#8Spend some of your time building something real. Nothing demonstrates that you can perform like envisioning, building, and launching a product that real people are willing to pay real money to acquire. It doesn't have to be particularly big or complicated, either. Just proving that you can accomplish the aforementioned tasks will go a long way to getting you through the door.
Even the "paying real money" bit is unnecessary.
Having some working, usable sample code - whether your own project or participation in someone else's - obviously provides some gauge of what you can do but also indicates that you can make a program, maybe work with other people, maybe understand the various things involved in the process. Quite a few people come into the workforce only knowing how to write code, which while a prerequisite is nothing like actually programming. If you know the difference, you have a leg-up already.
Networking is important, and even someone like me can do some of it sort of incidentally by joining the local User Group etc.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#9The answer is persistence. Check Craigslist/eng/ in all major metro areas - chicago, nyc, sfbay, austin, lax, wdc. Email promising job ads daily. Post your resume on craigslist, especially in SFbay, weekly, and alternate with other metro areas. I would be shocked if you did not get at least a few promising leads after a few weeks of hitting up the craigslist rotation. in the meantime, code up something cool, and post…
I was in a similar situation just two years ago -- newly minted college graduate, didn't have a CS or related degree, trying to find work based on a couple of programming classes I took and a meager handful of outside projects. I used Monster, recruiting firms, and Craigslist to get work; surprisingly, the two jobs I've landed in Austin were both the result of Craigslist posts, and I couldn't be happier with my current position.
Just keep at looking for open doors, and work on independent projects when you're not actively engaged in job hunting. In my personal experience, the projects don't need to be exceptionally unique and amazing -- find something that's a manageable size, and prove that you have the chops to see something through to completion with solid code.
Re: Ask HN: How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work?
#10The other advice about doing something open source or building something you can sell is great and all, but it's March and you're a senior which means that you're probably looking to land something in the next 3-6 months, which isn't a lot of time.
In that case, your answer is: network!
I've seen so many qualified candidates get passed over for someone equally or even marginally less qualified because they had an inside line on the position. It's probably too late to do much networking at school (i.e. joining clubs, etc.), but the thick part of conference season is just getting started. Get a student rate to something while you still can (JavaOne seems to have been free for students in the past...not sure what Oracle plans for this year, though). I'm guessing that your 2 years experience has come from internships, so that would be a good place to start too. They might not have been your ideal place to work, but they'll give you a paycheck while you plan your next move.
If you are going to work on an open source project, pick one that's sponsored by a big name company (i.e. not an academic project or start-up). No matter what the project leader asks you to help with, do it! If he says they need work on documentation or fleshing-out the test suite, don't complain. I know it's not sexy work, but when the project leader gets a req. to hire someone, he'll know that you're someone that can be counted on to get the job done.
Finally, learn something new. I recently saw a very qualified developer get passed over for a job not because he didn't have the skills listed in the job offer, but because he didn't show an ability to work outside of his set of core competencies. Since you're new, nobody is going to hire you based on expertise. Your secret weapon will be the fact that you can learn whatever new skill or technology it is that the hiring manager needs next. In other words, you probably want to branch out from Java (it's a skill area flush with "experts" and hiring managers who are only looking for people who can spit out code quickly).