51–60 of 182 posts
[1] - https://remoteleaf.com
Find a church - neither too big nor too small. Introduce yourself as someone willing to do assist with the IT/ secretarial / etc. in exchange for warm food and a shelter bed. Churches have very large networks. When you get on your feet, and you will, remember who helped you survive.
that might work in the US, but in Europe churches are poor and mostly attended by old ladies with networks of other old ladies.
I solved this problem for myself 30 years ago by turning up outside the local Manpower offices at 7am with safety boots on. The local construction gangs picked up any extra workers they needed for the day there, and it was halfway decent cash-in-hand work. I earned enough for my share of the deposit for a house share with a mate, and the rest was easier once I had an address. But times have changed and I very much do…
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> It feels like you could easily pick up any entry level dev job? HN would always surprise me. Don't underestimate the extreme prejudice in tech hiring. Everyone's looking out for "red flags" and excuses to turn down a candidate. It's especially bad if you don't have either 1) recent, relevant education, or 2) recent, relevant industry experience. Open source participation might save you but not as often as you'd thi…
Als being homeless is a huge red flag for any job. It's a nasty spiral.
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that might work in the US, but in Europe churches are poor and mostly attended by old ladies with networks of other old ladies.
Be careful in the US too, churches aren't so nice here.
Seems like you had a bad experience at a church or maybe you've never been in one and you're judging them based on the media you view.
Either way, not a good reason to make wide blanket statements like that.
Find a church - neither too big nor too small. Introduce yourself as someone willing to do assist with the IT/ secretarial / etc. in exchange for warm food and a shelter bed. Churches have very large networks. When you get on your feet, and you will, remember who helped you survive.
That’s a bit surprising given that the Netherlands has a generous social system. I’ll try as a first step to ask and look for government organizations that could potentially help and give you free stuff. Next, I’ll drop tech for a while. I’ll look for any job that has low or no barrier to entries. Washing cars, cleaning carpets, collecting garbage, etc... These are jobs with little barriers to entry and that will hav…
I'd strongly disagree with this. If you can code, you are wasting your time doing any other kind of work. Do whatever it takes to land a job. Lie about your living situation. Spend all day at the library practicing Leet Code. The amount of time you spend trying to land a job will more than be made up by the salary delta of tech vs. menial labor.
Once you do a good job for someone, ask if you can use them as a reference - and if they know 2-3 other people who could use your services. Show up on time, respond to calls/messages and you're already a cut above most others. Don't undercharge for your services, and raise your prices regularly. Try and find ways to have clients pay you on a retainer basis so you have consistent cashflow (managed hosting, regular maintenance, on-call retainers etc). Remote work didn't work for me (too much competition from people in cheaper countries - and my best clients were people who did not have the tech skills to even use those sites), building in-person local relationships did (including at meetups/conferences with people I then worked for remotely).
You won't get rich this way, but you should be able to find enough business owners who need reliable, friendly help with something - data entry, setting up Google Suite or VOIP phone systems, basic websites, CRUD web apps, databases, automation, spyware removal, etc. Plus you end up with a portfolio that can help you get a full-time tech job - "consulting" counts as industry experience, and I found employers liked that I could handle a project end-to-end, understanding the business needs involved. This was my path, including the near-homelessness. I started making banner ads for $10/hr. My first $100 day was a real milestone. I'm now an Engineering Manager at a large company (~10 years later).
Best of luck to you. Hang in there, hustle hard.
2. find any (non-IT, just 20h if necessary) job through the job centre etc. to feed you and finance a home
3. research and visit all potential organizations that provide benefits while you are unemployed
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The Netherlands has a generous social system that I can't access because I'm not actually from here. It happens to be the last place I was in when I was told I didn't have a home or money any more. Going "home" is kinda pointless - there's not actually any support in the UK for people like me, so I'd be sleeping rough there quickly anyway.
> The Netherlands has a generous social system that I can't access because I'm not actually from here. Then any reason why you are there? Are you allowed to legally work in the Netherlands. > there's not actually any support in the UK for people like me I'm pretty sure there is. 2/3 of British families receive some kind of benefits in Britain. You might have to ask for it. I also suspect there is more to this story (…
I am.
> I'm pretty sure there is.
There's a very complicated system, but tl;dr being unable to find work would cause me to lose benefits and be left without a home. I don't trust that I would be able to find a job, so I would prefer to keep a roof over my head for now.
To add to the mess, I'm trans, which means companies (even big ones) will not put me in a position where customers might possibly see me, or where they might wind up with another coworker causing an HR incident, which means an awful lot of traditional jobs for people without qualifications are out. I've had this said to my face in the UK, and I've had interviewers in the UK visibly disappointed when they saw me.