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

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

#21

Post by linuxftw »

gtirloni wrote: post #16
linuxftw wrote: post #5

Going straight to 'software engineer' is hard IMO. Unless you graduate from a 4 year degree in CS or have an internship or some other real professional software design experience, I think it's a hard field to break into. You might want to aim lower initially. Help desk or field rep for a tech company, etc. Ansible, terraform, linux automation, those kind of jobs are more widespread than straight software development…

> Ansible, terraform, linux automation, those kind of jobs are more widespread than straight software development jobs. There's literally 10 or more frontend jobs for each DevOps position you find advertised. Unless you think frontend dev is not "real software development", which wouldn't make any sense. Additionally, DevOps requires much more knowledge about infrastructure than just learning some automation tools.

With a straight development role, you're going up against people with 4 year degrees. For the 'devops' side, these are skills that aren't typically achieved by university students.

While there might be 1000 front end jobs, you're competing with 10k applicants. For 100 devops jobs, you're competing with 10 applicants.

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

#22

Post by SinisterAlex »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #20
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #19

Honestly, I would make the link to your well formatted, easy to read, resume much more prominent - https://jgarrettcorbin.com/pdf/resume.pdf

Something that jumps out to me from the resume is the gap from 2011-2016 and then 2019-2021. This will be seen as a red flag by many recruiters and for anyone reviewing your CV - which may explain why you are doing well in interviews, but then not getting any further.

To be fair - it says "Relevant Work Experience"

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

#23

Post by pull_my_finger »

ineedausername wrote: post #14

> If anyone has any helpful advice, I would love to hear it. Skip the Junior part, go for mid level and find a way to justify it. Somehow show that you already have 2 years of experience and you now qualify as mid. I'm not saying "lie", but I'm also not saying not to.

Wouldn't you be cheating yourself out of any kind of mentorship one would expect as a junior (in addition to lying and putting yourself in a position to slow your team down r/t lack of expected experience) ? Title inflation is a thing, but maybe they're not "totally" arbitrary.

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

#24

Post by ineedausername »

pull_my_finger wrote: post #23
ineedausername wrote: post #14

> If anyone has any helpful advice, I would love to hear it. Skip the Junior part, go for mid level and find a way to justify it. Somehow show that you already have 2 years of experience and you now qualify as mid. I'm not saying "lie", but I'm also not saying not to.

Wouldn't you be cheating yourself out of any kind of mentorship one would expect as a junior (in addition to lying and putting yourself in a position to slow your team down r/t lack of expected experience) ? Title inflation is a thing, but maybe they're not "totally" arbitrary.

In his case not so much, i think he is competent based oh his portfolio.

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

#25

Post by platevoltage »

ineedausername wrote: post #14

> If anyone has any helpful advice, I would love to hear it. Skip the Junior part, go for mid level and find a way to justify it. Somehow show that you already have 2 years of experience and you now qualify as mid. I'm not saying "lie", but I'm also not saying not to.

I have been applying for jobs that aren't explicitly junior. I know that "years of experience" is really just a wish list. I have used coding at work for several years, although i've never had a "software engineer" title.

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

#26

Post by aga_ml »

You seem like a cool person, and are working hard towards a transition - congrats on getting this far. I think with a bit of effort you can follow through. A few thoughts:

- Website makes you look like a front end developer, but you are applying to full stack.

Stepping back a bit, an employer is asking the question: is this person the best person for the job that I'm hiring for? As the job seeker, you need to think about what type of job you are going to be the ideal candidate for and really focus on communicating that.

- Bullet points on resume could be improved. For example, Content is easily added or removed using a JSON configuration file Its a given that you would do that. It is so basic that it raised a flag in my mind. Its like saying, I used numpy to do math computations in python. It would be better to not include that statement.

Full stack web developer who will help your company succeed by completing projects on time and under budget. This sentence comes off as pretty generic, and it is not clear that you have experience with that. It would be better to have an experience where you delivered a project under time constraints.

Anyways, sorry that I'm nitpicking a bit. It is hard to know exactly what is holding you back without knowing more about what jobs you are applying to, what is happening in the interviews, and so on.

I'd also think about if there is any company you can work at where having some background in industrial automation would be a plus.

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

#27

Post by platevoltage »

danielmakestech wrote: post #17

I can see one potential improvement in your resume: BRAND YOU PROJECTS. 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 lan…

That's an interesting idea.

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

#28

Post by aga_ml »

aga_ml wrote: post #26

You seem like a cool person, and are working hard towards a transition - congrats on getting this far. I think with a bit of effort you can follow through. A few thoughts: - Website makes you look like a front end developer, but you are applying to full stack. Stepping back a bit, an employer is asking the question: is this person the best person for the job that I'm hiring for? As the job seeker, you need to think a…

I suppose I'm also curious, are you applying to jobs that do algorithms and data structures interviews?

If so, you really need to nail those. A lot of people complain about those interviews, but they do serve a real purpose. There is a significant gap between building a small website and building a system that scales. If you are going after high impact software engineering jobs in the bay area, then you'll need to demonstrate that skill set. I don't see anything about algorithms and data structures in your resume, so I'd assume that you don't have that knowledge.

Granted this may be an unpopular opinion, but not having those skills significantly limits your upward potential.

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

#29

Post by platevoltage »

aga_ml wrote: post #26

You seem like a cool person, and are working hard towards a transition - congrats on getting this far. I think with a bit of effort you can follow through. A few thoughts: - Website makes you look like a front end developer, but you are applying to full stack. Stepping back a bit, an employer is asking the question: is this person the best person for the job that I'm hiring for? As the job seeker, you need to think a…

I've been working on my portfolio/resume for a long time, so all there really is left to do is nitpick, so I don't mind at all.

I agree that maybe I can do more with the bullet points. I can think of some higher level things that "JSON configuration file"

I also agree with the "Professional Summary". I hate it. I workshopped it with some people and this is what we came up with. It sounds so stupid and now I'm thinking the move is to leave it off completely.

Could I ask what you mean't about my portfolio looking like I'm a front end developer? I'm pretty sure the majority of my projects are either Full Stack, electron.js apps, or have embedded components.

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

#30

Post by aga_ml »

platevoltage wrote: post #29
aga_ml wrote: post #26

You seem like a cool person, and are working hard towards a transition - congrats on getting this far. I think with a bit of effort you can follow through. A few thoughts: - Website makes you look like a front end developer, but you are applying to full stack. Stepping back a bit, an employer is asking the question: is this person the best person for the job that I'm hiring for? As the job seeker, you need to think a…

I've been working on my portfolio/resume for a long time, so all there really is left to do is nitpick, so I don't mind at all. I agree that maybe I can do more with the bullet points. I can think of some higher level things that "JSON configuration file" I also agree with the "Professional Summary". I hate it. I workshopped it with some people and this is what we came up with. It sounds so stupid and now I'm thinkin…

I just mean that the design of the website is very nice (fancy?) so at a glance, that is the main thing that I noticed. Granted, I didn't end up reading things too carefully because I was thinking about the design. I think that the website good as long as you put your resume front and center and improve your resume.
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