Ask HN: Landing a programming job by virtue of a side project only?

1. I would whiteboard you and vet your previous clients/projects. This also assumes I have time. Make sure you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov. I've seen bad code from people who have made decent looking projects. When I looked deeper I just saw copy pastes from stackoverflow.

2. This makes it harder - just learn react, new ES stuff and webpack if you want to focus on front end, it doesn't take long, just run yourself through some tutorials and build a small project to familiarize yourself. Some people will ask you trivia.

3. You're being unrealistic.

I suggest you ask for referrals.

> I would whiteboard you > you're good on from a project pov and an algorithms pov

As someone who also hires software people, I would urge you to review the evidence on whiteboarding. It's difficult to discard your own anecdotal evidence, but hiring has no control group -- you have no idea how many great people you're missing as a result of whiteboarding.

The reasons against whiteboarding have been discussed here many times, but I'll summarize them again:

- They're unnatural. People haven't practiced writing code standing up, with markers, with other people around, in real-time with minimal thought/planning, or with a potentially life-changing job on the line, and they don't do that after you hire them.

- They're biased against people who are introverted, who haven't specifically practiced whiteboarding, and/or who just aren't as cocky. Why are those traits you want to filter out?

- Most programming jobs are about learning and critical thinking, not regurgitating algorithms.

- They're humiliating for most people. That alone should be enough to end the practice. When people ask me for advice, I tell them to avoid companies whose first interaction with you is humiliating.

- Experienced candidates can (and should) refuse to do whiteboard interviews, which means your company is missing out.

I hope that's at least food for thought!

While these items might be true, as an interviewer you are not trying to solve for “find all good candidates” but, instead, are solving for “find one good enough and better than the rest”.

Anymore, I love that I have a clear path on how to obtain a very high six figure gig with plenty of resources to get there. I’ll gladly play that game, with enthusiasm. When others focus on the plight of the interviewee, others are leetcoding, white-boarding, practicing, reading up on blind, etc.

I’ve never hired someone who was self-taught, not because self-taught people can’t be equal or better, but because you’re trying to buy security and stability. The most expensive mistake you can make as a manager is hiring the wrong person, and self-educated people just aren’t worth the risk when you have a dozen other candidates who are great. I’m Danish though and things are a little different here because education is free. In face the government will even pay you a small amount of monthly money while you study. So we don’t have that many self-educated people, and those who are, are typically self-educated for a range of reasons that put them at a disadvantage from the get go.

So my point isn’t to discourage you, but to make you aware that managers might see your lack of formal education as a risk that you need to mitigate.

Everyone can learn to program, but learning how to program, correctly, efficiently and safe comes with formal education and you probably need to show that you know at least something about how to make CS based decisions. Maybe you do, if so great. If you don’t, spend a little time researching best practices, read up on design patterns and maybe complete the MITX intro course(s) to CS on edx.org.

I’m not sure knowing a specific framework is really all that valuable. If your can build something with LAMP/JS that makes money then you’ve already demonstrated your ability to write software. On the other hand it wouldn’t hurt you either.

The $500 MRR is an interesting selling point, for sure.

See yourself as a product you must sell to a new client, your future company. The client is made of: - A future manager - Future colleagues - HR / Upper management

Each part of the client has its own set of requirement. Getting the interview depends mostly on selling the resume: make professional accomplishment clear, show that you understand what's happening around you and focus on problems and their solution.

1) I would definitely consider you for an interview, but with a strong bias against you: I, like many others, have a formal education and believe it helped me. I also hired exotic profiles and got bitten. The fact you have a product up and running is the only reason why I'd pay to see you.

2) Vanilla or not, what I would want to see in frontend code is clarity and team-orientation. If your code can be worked on by a team, and is clear and well done, that'd be more impressive than an angular spaghetti. I would ask you your opinion and try to determine if you can scale to team work, big project and deadlines. Your profile is usually understood to be able to accept ungrateful work happily while learning, and become senior in a 5-year horizon at best. You'll be expected to be humble unless you can demonstrate exceptional insight about programming.

3) I would refuse to see you immediately if I heard about you wanting to slack while we pay you to learn, and I would strongly signal during an interview that not only this is not possible even for the CEO, but that wanting it while you have so much work to do just to be on par with the team that will have to support you for a few years is disrespectful.

The top rule I try to apply when recruiting, is : is that guy better than me. If yes, hired.