Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–88 of 88 posts

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#81

Post by mkoryak »

smus wrote: post #75
bad_interivewee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the leetcode/algo question stuff is mentioned here on HN alot but I've never gotten to the point where a test was actually offered to me. will start practicing though and hopefully an opportunity pops up.

If you're not getting calls, it's your resume that is bad. That either means the format, or the content. Seems to me the only change to the content that you can make is working on and advertising well written open source personal projects that your interviewers can see, or contributing to large open source projects.

This is correct.

Your resume should be exactly 1 page long, and have something that stands out (company worked for, open source contributions, volunteer work.. anything that makes it be different).

If you have worked for decades, write "over 10 years experience" :)

Bullet points are good, long sentences are bad.

Listing tech/languages is a good idea if you can list a lot of real stuff. No one cares if you used ms word.

It should be 1 page!!! Don't cheat via small fonts. People can look at your linkedin if they need to know all that crap.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#82

Post by fellellor »

Veen wrote: post #43
have_faith wrote: post #25

Being autodidactic myself the best method I've found is to simply over-engineer your personal projects for the sake of learning. I have side projects that I've never even launched that are built using whatever I could find as "best practice" for solving that particular problem at scale.

This how I learned various technologies. I often re-implement my personal invoicing system (I'm a freelance copywriter) in whatever technology I am interested in: i) PWA with a react front-end, ii) AWK-based invoice processing iii) massively overcomplicated system based on Elixir and Phoenix Liveview, etc. I've also done something similar with a personal flood monitoring app (I live near a river prone to flooding). I…

If you’ve done all this then how in this world are you not a “real” developer?

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#83

Post by vmception »

camb416 wrote: post #61
bad_interivewee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ive had a corp for a while but never called myself "senior engineer". maybe ill give that a shot.

As a Tech Director, I don’t like this. We’re not fooled by this kind of thing. I’d rather see someone dedicated to learning and growing, but that’s just me maybe.

As a tech director, you get to evaluate that holistically because the recruiter called them back at all, when they otherwise would have been bounced before your discretion came into play

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#84

Post by 6510 »

vmception wrote: post #26
bad_interivewee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does one simply “get hired” while being mid career with no professional sw experience? asking for a friend.

incorporate your software company list a couple clients if you can point out that you’ve been working for that (your) software company for several years as a senior software engineer pass bullshit brainteaser problems viola

List additional clients when work for previous clients is done.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#85

Post by thecleaner »

Yes there is a path forward. As others have said learn react +typescript. You might also want to pick up redux. Try to create performance visualisations with d3 as plotting data is a different ball game compared to your normal web development. More generally learn how to create great interactive visualisations. You can also look at other advanced techniques like crdts and their use in making shared text editors. Then you have some very serious chops. Best of luck, I hope to see another great engineer added to the delightful world of frontend development.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#86

Post by mettamage »

brightball wrote: post #62
Pandabob wrote: post #27

I'll give this a shot: 1. Learn React and Typescript. React has taken root in the enterprise and it seems to be the frontend equivalent of Java. 2. Learn about CI/CD: Github Actions is a good starting place. If you're hosting your projects in something like Vercel, try running separate staging and production environments. 3. Look at popular open source frontend projects. The newly released Supabase dashboard[0] seems…

I’d bump 7 to the front of the list but otherwise, totally agree.

https://sqlteaching.com

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#87

Post by johncoltrane »

bad_interivewee wrote: post #47
johncoltrane wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web agencies would be a good start. Expanding on the above… I work at such a place and our bar for recruitment is a lot lower than that of more snooty companies principally focused on software. If you can demonstrate potential then it will be relatively easy to get in. From there, you will start working on projects larger than what you are used to, that _won't be_ "the next $FAMOUS_THING" while still offering plenty…

a few years ago i did manage to get a pm/ba type role at a small-medium size agency. giant mess of a place (norm for that industry i guess) but it was a meat grinder - all about billable hours (which were hard to come by since every project was undersold and over budget), which meant I worked 50+ hours every week with no salary increase or bonus. burnt out and left when it was obvious there was no opportunity there.…

No two web agencies are alike. I've known the kind you describe and I hated them but I've known—and currently work at—much more comfortable places. Apply and see how it goes.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from tiny websites to serious tech skills?

#88

Post by aristofun »

No pure “learning” experience will give you “serious” tech skills. Not to mention that 99% of tutorials and courses out there are for beginners.

Good Large-scale best practices are always born out of specific practical challenges

And the only way to face this kind of challenges is to join a real world project, team, company.

Try to score as complicated job as you can with your current skills (in terms of technical challenges) and then move up the ladder.

Post reply on HN