Ask HN: How does a hobby programmer get hired? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by chaps » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

foreverCarlos wrote: post #138

chaps wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a red flag when it's also attached to a certain kind of confidence that their bootcamp experience was on-par with years of experience or education. As in, the kind of attitude where that they feel that because they went through the exhausting bootcamp stage, everything next is just an application of what came from the bootcamp. It's something I've only seen with programmers from bootcamps.

Honestly, never encountered that. In my experience bootcampers are usually self-conscious about their background. Maybe they behave differently at small companies/startups (my experience is at a big tech co)?

That could be it. I work outside of "tech" these days at smaller orgs that naturally attract people with significantly different personal motivations to those in the tech world.

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

#162

Post by josephg » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #147

nicoburns wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s because boot camp graduates often have no experience prior to the boot camp, so they’ll often only have 3 months coding experience total. Whereas most other applicants will have much more experience than that even if they have no professional experience.

But in those few months, they were often trained intensively on exactly the tech stack you're looking for, and they built some things, in a team, that look a lot like what's actually done day to day in many businesses. In an up to date way. That helps! We have only one boot camp graduate, who came from a completely different career. He's been productive from day 1, has carefully listened to all advice he's got since…

There are knowledge holes a mile wide with bootcamp curriculums though. The programs I’ve seen don’t teach:

- Information security

- Anything lower level than Python/Ruby

- Unix (streams, files, processes and threads, syscalls, etc)

- Debugging. (Except incedentally)

Not knowing these things can be fine in a feature factory workplace. But having an engineer on your team who has no idea about infosec is an active danger. “I make a sql query from this string builder” / “we save the passwords in this database table” / “the AWS credential is here in the javascript code in the repository” / etc.

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

#163

Post by nyarlathotep_ » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

pryelluw wrote: post #7

This was me years ago. The short answer is: contract work. Consulting or freelance. This is the way to get experience without having to struggle with finding a salaried position. How do you find opportunities? Go to LinkedIn, search for staffing companies, and message their recruiters letting them know you are available. They will ask for a resume. However, a contractors/consultant resume is different than a salaried…

It's perhaps not a terrible idea to host a simple "blog-type" site that goes through your journey and documents some things about your experience expertise, maybe a blurb/portfolio and things of that nature.

Many developer-types seem to have personal sites these days that cover that kind of stuff.

I'm not a hiring manager, but I've led lots of interviews and this, IMO/E demonstrates competency in a few areas (this varies depending on how the site was deployed):

- basic comprehension of "web stuff" - what "hosting" means in practice (registering a domain + setting up DNS, some sort of service/server to host your assets) - some means of deploying it

It's often a good conversation starter too--you mention experience (maybe something on your "blog"), interviewer asks about it, conversation pivots to how you set the site up in the manner you did:

"I chose $FRAMEWORK/simple static assets and hosted on $SERVICE as I felt this was a straightforward way to host a site, and I like how $OBJECTSTORE makes hosting easy opposed to setting up a server to just serve static assets."

Personally, I like talking about that stuff so it's always a good talk when that comes up during a candidate interview.

There's a lot of potential in those conversations, especially given a large portion of software-type jobs are web-related today.

Also, regarding the comment above, this is likely helpful if you're a consultant where you can advertise your services more explicitly.

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

#164

Post by jdowner » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:09 PM UTC

In your situation, my concerns would relate to evaluating your (1) ability to write professional software and (2) what are the gaps in your knowledge.

To address these concerns, consider contributing to an open source project.

Many of the hurdles a candidate has to clear to get a job as a software engineer are intended to determine whether you can actually program. Ignoring the effectiveness of these hurdles, the point is that you need to demonstrate the claims on your resume/CV. If you contribute to an open source project you are putting your work out there for everyone to see, including how you actually work with other engineers and how you deal with critical feedback about your work.

There is a lot of software engineering that is not interesting or attention getting but it has to be done. Often, this involves learning about things that you would not have bothered with if you are a hobbyist. By contributing to a successful open source project, you will be exposed to ideas that you might not otherwise have encountered.

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

#165

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:09 PM UTC

operatingthetan wrote: post #134

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one chap refuse to check my portfolio, because "I probably faked it." Here's my GH ID: https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY You can easily see that I faked over a decade of checkin history, dozens of repos, in multiple organizations, over 20 shipped apps, lots of blog posts, tutorials, class modules, etc.

>I had one chap refuse to check my portfolio, because "I probably faked it." I don't know the context of how that came up, but I'd probably let the recruiter know of their unprofessional behavior if that happened to me.

That is a "gray area." There's another thread, going on, about "illegal questions," and most applicants won't confront their tormenters, because it's an easy way to get blackballed (labeled a "troublemaker").

In my case, since I had been experiencing veiled insults and condescension from almost every interviewer (and being "ghosted" by recruiters, when they find out my age), I just said "Bugger this for a lark," and decided to retire early.

I doubt anyone misses me, but I am pretty sure that I could have helped at least one of the companies from going titsup.

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

#166

Post by throwitfaar » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:09 PM UTC

I am also a hobby programmer who would like to find a job as a software engineer. But lately I feel finding such a job is too difficult. Fortunately I have a stable job with a decent pay. Perhaps luck is a way of penetrating into the job market. Anyway, I am open to job proposals.

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

#167

Post by josephg » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

phphphphp wrote: post #58

tejohnso wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Passing a coding challenge is easy Something must be wrong with me then because I've been programming for decades in multiple areas productively, but successfully completing three leetcode medium/hard within 45 minutes while also talking through my thought process is not something I'd call easy. > so don't focus on them at all I'd suggest most people aren't going to get past the first level if they follow this advi…

Regarding coding challenges, I meant to say that they're just as easy to pass as they are to fail, meaning you can fail one test and pass another and it mean nothing about your ability or value as a software engineer. I've failed some embarrassingly easy coding challenges and completed others in the best manner the hirer has ever seen. They're meaningless. You should not consider them as a reflection on your value or…

> Regarding coding challenges, I meant to say that … They're meaningless.

They’re not meaningless. I worked as a technical screener for a recruiting company a few years ago. We interviewed thousands of people and had good data on this stuff. Programming challenges had high signal - doing well at ours was positively correlated with all the other parts of our quantitative assessment (knowledge, software anrchitecture, etc) and ultimately with getting hired.

There’s a reason they’re popular. It’s not all cargo culting.

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

#168

Post by felipellrocha » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:24 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #88

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 a hiring manager for a couple of years now, and have nearly 10 yrs professional dev experience in the industry. Bootcamps are a red flag for you? What? Do you have any rationale for that? Makes zero sense to me. If someone has done a bootcamp, that's a big plus. Online college is neutral. The rest I agree with.

His red flag for bootcampers is a red flag for his managerial skills

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

#169

Post by josephg » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

andrew_ wrote: post #74

roland35 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may think coding challenges are easy - but after interviewing many "senior" engineers I've found that it's very helpful to have _some_ sort of coding as part of the interview. Algorithm and Data Structures based questions are not really popular, but they are at least a known quantity and can be studied for as a candidate. I prefer more realistic scenario type coding interviews (ie implement a new feature, fix a bu…

imo falling back on those kinds of code challenges indicate a lack of imagination and creativity on the part of the hiring personnel. the industry has grown so much and there are so many new tools available, people work in so many new and creative ways, that there's no reason to use methods that predate when most candidates these days were born.

I don’t agree at all. If it’s so cut and dry for you, what other forms of assessment would you recommend instead?

I think technical assessment needs to assess lots of skills, but obviously one of the skills to test is how good someone is at programming.

There’s a few ways to do that - my personal favourite is to have a few hundred lines of buggy code with failing tests and ask the candidate to debug it for you. But from the data I’ve seen, asking someone to code something from scratch also provides a lot of signal even if you also get them to debug something. (If you were going to pick one test, coding from scratch is a better assessment for juniors and debugging is better to assess seniors).

But I think some form of practical programming assessment is necessary. You won’t learn if someone can program well by talking to them. And take home programming tasks are too easily gamed.

I do think you should make the programming challenge relevant to the job though. If you’re hiring a frontend dev, get them to make a webpage. A backend dev? Get them to make a set of rest endpoints wrapping a simple database. Algorithm challenges make sense for systems programming, or when you’re hiring generalists at FAANG and such.

(Source: I’ve interviewed over 400 people and worked with data scientists who looked at the per question results.)

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

#170

Post by georgyo » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

There is a lot of comments, but no one took a moment to look at your profile and visit your website.

Pointed advice, specifically for you.

1. There is no links to any of your code. If you are actually in front of a computer so much, surely you have somethings you can share.

2. Your writing is pretty good, but you don't write about any tech stuff. Since your writing is good, write about some of your programming projects.

2b. The Linux post for example is pretty bare. You talk about weeks of customization, but you never explain what customizations. Just that everything works now. This is a boring and uninteresting read, and doesn't inform me at all about your ability.

3. The blog also has sone questionable material, which is fine, however the most recent post where you talk about events that lost your job or nearly lost your job are pretty big red flags.

4. I see ~22yrs in the service industry. This is also fine, but all the above is amplified. People are innately more understanding of an 18 year old not having anything to showcase, but someone in their 30s and 40s is less likely to be hired just for their eagerness to learn. As a result, you need to really have some visable passion.

5. All new hires, and especially new juniors, on a team are initially a productive drain on a team. Your teammates spend time and effort bringing you up to speed and mentoring you. There is risk and effort involved for them beyond it just not working out. This makes it tricky for new devs. All of the above is so you have something to prove you are worth the effort.