Ask HN: Approaching 40 and trying to get a foothold into Software Engineering

Yeah I'll be honest I think I have the resume game down OK but I'm clueless about cover letters.

I like to believe that jobs only care about stated ability but I would also believe that if a recruiter had to pick to interview between someone without a degree but better-than-average stated ability and someone with a degree but average stated ability, they'd go with the degree-holder. I think especially right now with the higher demand for jobs they can be pickier too.

Good luck with rewording, honestly I'd wager that writing a good 1 page resume is much harder than writing a 10 page essay. Being concise and precise is difficult - not to mention the fact that if you're like me you have to constantly avoid shooting yourself in the foot by not framing things as positively as you can (e.g. I'm definitely more prone to writing "I'm not so great with C++" as opposed to "I'm more adept with X/Y/Z, but I still have good proficiency in C++").

I do have this inkling that interviews are more and more rejecting the algs-style tech interview questions, which is good because those sorts of questions are largely irrelevant to day-to-day work (at least for a junior IME). I certainly don't think you need to nolife Codewars - and also that it's better in many ways to upskill - but I just wanted to check that you were prepared for it. It would be disheartening to hear that a good engineer got their foot in the door but was then kicked out because they couldn't conjure quickselect out of thin air (can you tell I'm still upset about a past interview?).

And just like before from me, best of luck.

Your site says to scroll down - how can you tweak it, so I don't have to read that to know what to do next?

It took me a while to figure out you had a live demo of each of your project. Make that button stand out. Add some color to your site - it's black, and depressing. You want the person going to your site to feel drawn in.

This may sound harsh, but it's not meant to be - but do you have a better photo for your site? It's a cool Facebook photo style... but it's not good for a portfolio/CV type photo. First impressions count for way more than people would like to admit. If your potential employers first impression of you is from the site - then you're starting a step behind.

You do have an interesting and good breadth of work on your portfolio. So you have that going for you.

It would look so much better if you had something like "Built StoryFactory.io" with cool logo rather than a link to ec2 instance.

And that would be my advice in general - build something that looks professional and not like a project from a coding tutorial. It can be as simple as a to-do app at its core, with a few features, but make a killer landing page for it (you can obviously use a template), figure out a good name, buy a domain, etc.