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Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

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Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#111

Post by lrvick »

wturner wrote: post #51

If you can pass employer coding challenges as easily as you say, the rest is low hanging fruit. It’s hard for me to imagine what the problem is on your end. I have the complete inverse problem. Here’s what I would do: Make up a name for your own personal company and get a matching domain. Make a basic website with your domain. Under the resume/CV entry for this make-believe-company write that you perform contract wor…

I founded a community called #! 20 years ago where anyone can show up and start hacking on community projects and get some mentorship.

We sometimes put bounties on things we wish to see done for the community, but in general we are a non-profit digital hackerspace and do not pay ourselves or anyone else. We encourage anyone that contributes that is unemployed to put it on their resume and we are happy to be referrals for them.

Helped a ton of people get jobs in tech over the years.

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#112

Post by torben-friis »

rubberband wrote: post #86

Late to the party, but maybe I can help. I've helped in the hiring of many developers. (grain of salt, just my opinion, etc...) * Don't do bootcamps. It's a red flag for me. This can be said for any 100% online college. (again, I'm just being honest). Community colleges are fine. * You having a Github that you've committed stuff to often-ish will most interest me. I don't give a crud if you contribute to open source.…

I've been training juniors and taking part in technical interviews for a few years now, and I can say that bootcamp hires were generally the best performant.

Particularly those in late twenties/early thirties who were coming from an entirely different field - we had tons of applications from former architects and biologists for some reason - tend to outshine younger software engineers fresh out of school in just a few months.

I could understand this opinion to be controversial, but considering bootcamps a red flag vs just a hobbyist programmer with no education? Sounds ridiculous to me.

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#113

Post by champagnepapi »

foreverCarlos wrote: post #107
tinco wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've hired from bootcamps multiple times, it's a great source of junior developers. It is however a show of the absolute minimum amount of skill a person could possibly have before you take them on as a developer. If this person says that they've been coding for years, then that puts them at a way higher level than a recent bootcamp grad. Instead of doing a bootcamp, spend a week or two building simple apps in whatev…

That still doesn’t make bootcamps a red flag. Also, there are many self-taught programmers who complete a bootcamp just to gain confidence, make connections, etc.

Agreed

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#114

Post by jeltz »

yojo wrote: post #53

I had essentially the same background as you, and made the leap 10 years ago. Here’s what I did: 1) With a friend, I worked through a bunch of tutorials of the current startup web framework (at the time, Rails). 2) At my non-programming job, I looked for opportunities to code things. I made some internal websites, utility tools, stuff like that. 3) I worked my way through Cracking the Coding Interview. This was pre-l…

Leet code interviews have existed for at least 15 years, probably 20. And they were much more popular back then.

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#116

Post by culi »

rubberband wrote: post #86

Late to the party, but maybe I can help. I've helped in the hiring of many developers. (grain of salt, just my opinion, etc...) * Don't do bootcamps. It's a red flag for me. This can be said for any 100% online college. (again, I'm just being honest). Community colleges are fine. * You having a Github that you've committed stuff to often-ish will most interest me. I don't give a crud if you contribute to open source.…

Long time hobby programmer. I wasn't able to get into college programs for comp sci because I had transferred under a different major. I decided to do a bootcamp just to get connections

It ended up working pretty much exactly as planned. Made some lifelong friends, one of whom seems to know someone in every city in the country. She got me an interview and I'm now making more than many people I know who went through a full 4-year CS degree at my very expensive university

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#117

Post by culi »

wturner wrote: post #51

If you can pass employer coding challenges as easily as you say, the rest is low hanging fruit. It’s hard for me to imagine what the problem is on your end. I have the complete inverse problem. Here’s what I would do: Make up a name for your own personal company and get a matching domain. Make a basic website with your domain. Under the resume/CV entry for this make-believe-company write that you perform contract wor…

For a junior it's not usually the coding challenges that are the biggest hurdle. It's getting an interview in the first place. Let alone having your resume looked at if you don't have prior industry experience

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#118

Post by the_only_law »

I initially broke into the field having done some freelance work for some people when I was lucky enough to have connections to help funnel in work. A little embellishment + application spam got me into the industry, though it didn’t set me up for success. The first few years of my career were stuck in subpar jobs and to an extent that’s a legacy that still follows me.

If I had to go back, and had the time/money, I think I would take some time to get involved in opens source and try to build up at least a bit of reputation in some project. That’s about the closest thing to experience I can think of and I’ve actually still consider doing that a few times to break into new domains. Ofc that’s a lot of involved.

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#119

Post by culi »

lrvick wrote: post #111
wturner wrote: post #51

If you can pass employer coding challenges as easily as you say, the rest is low hanging fruit. It’s hard for me to imagine what the problem is on your end. I have the complete inverse problem. Here’s what I would do: Make up a name for your own personal company and get a matching domain. Make a basic website with your domain. Under the resume/CV entry for this make-believe-company write that you perform contract wor…

I founded a community called #! 20 years ago where anyone can show up and start hacking on community projects and get some mentorship. We sometimes put bounties on things we wish to see done for the community, but in general we are a non-profit digital hackerspace and do not pay ourselves or anyone else. We encourage anyone that contributes that is unemployed to put it on their resume and we are happy to be referrals…

Plug for exercism.org (I'm not affiliated). They have "learning paths" for a large number of different programming languages and volunteer experts that will do code reviews for you. The community is fantastic

Re: Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired?

#120

Post by thesnide »

I'd suggest to participate in a gamedev jam.

It has 2 benefits:

- it shows that you can code something

- it shows that you can finish something useful

As most of the time a gamedev is only 20% fun and 80% debugging or struggling with the concept...

And the ability to ship something is one of the best skill to me. The rest, can be learned.

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