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Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

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Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#111

Post by singingfish »

xcubic wrote: post #13
singingfish wrote: post #3

I spent several years working in research support roles at uni, and used code to automate the very boring parts of my job. Then thanks to open source activity I got into as part of that, I wrote a book. This was a bit under 10 years ago, I'm not sure there's the market in book writing these days.

What book did you write?

a perl book. (and yes, modern perl[1] is still a good, viable candidate for up-to-date-best-practices development. the only downside is it takes a certain amount of discipline to get it right. The other possible downside is that perl is currently not trendy, on the other hand it's proven to be a very good performer in the long game).

[1] http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl_2016/ - not my book, mine was more specialised, and I'm not going to transparently disclose my identity here :).

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#113

Post by bhu1st »

RobertDeNiro wrote: post #101
CrystalLangUser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you consistently find said companies?

It sucks, but networking. Desperate companies usually don't have to means to go through a formal interview process and they'll often hire someone solely based on recommendations. I got my current job simply because a friend worked there. I had practically zero experience in the field.

Yes, it was recommendation from personal network for me as well.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#114

Post by EADGBE »

I had done a few Wordpress frontends for friends and family and this Ad Agency really needed a "User Interface Developer" for the backlog of projects.

After a few long discussions technically of Wordpress development they deemed me capable enough to handle the workload. I persisted with my intentions to help and break into web development, and it blossomed wildly from there.

By the time I started my second job, I had a real portfolio of Fortune 500 brands live and in the flesh and never looked back from there.

Honestly, it was stupid how easy it was to break into this niche. It took a lot of sleepless nights and long work weeks, but seriously anyone could do this. I'm a big proponent of that. I was a meat cutter before this.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#115

Post by golergka »

jacknews wrote: post #5
golergka wrote: post #4

None of them - repo and portfolios weren't even mentioned. I was working as a game designer in the company that had a developer opening, and got burnt out. Since the company knew me, landing an interview was easy. I was teaching myself programming since I was 8, and, as I retroactively understand, was at steady junior level in high school already. The interview turned out to be a walk in the park. I wish I was more s…

You were burnt out and switched to game development? Frying pan, fire, surely?

I switched from game design to engineering. I was burned out by Excel sheets and meetings.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#116

Post by vfulco »

RUG3Y wrote: post #82
yeswecatan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people that don't have much on their github? I like the idea of judging people based on their code, but I would say the majority of people don't feel like coding at home after doing it for 8+ hours day.

There's another issue - most of my code is stuff I've done for clients to make money (I can't show that on github), or stuff that I've done for myself to make money (I don't want to show that either).

That's happened in my field. I've helped a couple of C-suiters to recreate/edit their resumes. No one will advertise my services because they have to keep up the BS facade they've done everything by themselves. I wish the industry would call BS on excellent resumes, public speaking prep, EQ workshops, etc. We can't be good at all things but the smart exec knows how to find people with the right services and answers. Burns me up a bit.

Vince Fulco, CFA, CAIA vfulco[@]weisisheng.cn

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#117

Post by ruairidhwm »

franciscop wrote: post #21

My first freelancing job (previous jobs were internships) came from this project getting to the HN front page: https://umbrellajs.com/ It basically skyrocketed from there to what you can see in https://francisco.io/resume/ , with basically all experiences afterwards building on top of that (either directly, by reference or just as credentials for the next ones). People (including Google) also seem to love https://pic…

Aside from looking really nice, that's a seriously impressive CV. Well done!

Hola de Madrid ;)

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#118

Post by franciscop »

ruairidhwm wrote: post #117
franciscop wrote: post #21

My first freelancing job (previous jobs were internships) came from this project getting to the HN front page: https://umbrellajs.com/ It basically skyrocketed from there to what you can see in https://francisco.io/resume/ , with basically all experiences afterwards building on top of that (either directly, by reference or just as credentials for the next ones). People (including Google) also seem to love https://pic…

Aside from looking really nice, that's a seriously impressive CV. Well done! Hola de Madrid ;)

Hola, veo que estas en el slack de Madrid Devs (;

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?

#119

Post by gcheong »

neverminder wrote: post #16
CrystalLangUser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you consistently find said companies?

I'm afraid I have no good recipe for that, I would suggest to "brute force" it - cast a wide net and filter approach. In my case it was mostly dumb luck really. You will now a desperate one when you see it - normally they will try to close the deal ASAP instead of jerking you around.

Another clue may be an interview that doesn't hit too hard technically.
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