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Ask HN: I actually need a job now

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Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#31

Post by IanOzsvald »

HackerNewsLondon will occur tonight (in about an hour) http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ and if you turn up and blag your way in (you're meant to buy a ticket in advance, offer cash on the door to pay for your pizza!) you'll see companies talking and often talking about jobs. Just network like crazy, most people there will know people hiring. Everyone is friendly, the organisers try to help startups. Go speak to co-organiser Steve (he's an ex recruiter), he'll know who is looking.

http://www.techcityjobs.co.uk/ has a lot of London-focused tech jobs, lots of Ruby etc. Ruby is definitely in demand in London. Avoid being a waiter if you can, your skills will rust.

http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/ occurred last weekend, over 100 startups were there pitching for jobs, go through the list of companies and cherrypick, then drop them a line? The CTOs I spoke with noted the lack of Rails folk. Most of the companies had 2-8 job openings each.

Bon chance, i.

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#33

Post by berrypicker »

Thanks to everyone for the advice, I feel a lot more confident now and will try to write a CV in a way to display my general skills as opposed to specific experience. I initially thought my application would get binned because I lacked their requirements. Also I guess a lot of coding experience is transferable I just really panicked at first...

I'll be in touch with those of you looking for a developer. Thanks again.

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#34

Post by owenmarshall »

JonFish85 wrote: post #22

Question, and I realize that you said you want a "job for a developer"... Have you considered interviewing for a job a level above that? I imagine with a few years' of experience at startups, you've learned a lot at a "design" level rather than simply an implementation level (not that there's anything wrong with that). Consider interviewing for a developer management position. Instead of focusing on specific language…

> If not management, I'd still say try to get a little more "meta" than just "I know Rails, Node..." Market yourself at a business-level, if that makes sense. In my opinion, the tools you use to solve a problem aren't as interesting as how you approach a problem and solve it.

This is fantastic advice for every programmer, and once I actually started believing it was when I started getting interesting jobs that pay well.

Stop thinking in terms of the technology you use. Don't focus on it in interviews. What you should stress is the problems you've solved & how that delivered value to the company (revenue, efficiency, etc.)

Being a Ruby master means nothing. Being able to deliver a tool that lets the company fulfill their million-dollar contract is what makes you a rock star.

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#35

Post by SheepSlapper »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #25
segmondy wrote: post #4

You can brush up PHP in a week or less. Don't go the waiter/shop assistant route. Just start interviewing for every and any position you see until you get one. Unless you are absolutely broke with zero money. Then take the first job you can, but make sure you take something that allows you time to be able to go for interviews.

Also if you're gonna go w/ PHP give Laravel a shot it's syntactically VERY close to rails, and just makes PHP beautiful.

Laravel is pretty awesome, I agree. But if you haven't touched PHP in a while then I'd recommend getting familiar with the vanilla language again first. Beacuse who knows what kind of frameworks you may be using in a future gig, but PHP is PHP.

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#36

Post by rickyc091 »

sn0v wrote: post #18
berrypicker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to clarify, I added the HN comment because I was a little surprised (having been in the startup cultural bubble for so long) at the jobs available, not because I'm complaining at the tools these businesses use.

IMO most interviewers don't look for a very specific skillset in a particular language. If you have experience with a wide range of languages and a number of projects, I don't see how that isn't a plus. Good luck!

+1 to this, I've had friends with a strong programming background join companies with zero knowledge of the language being used. They just learned it on the job. Fundamentals won't really change, syntax can be picked up.

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#37

Post by berrypicker »

JonFish85 wrote: post #22

Question, and I realize that you said you want a "job for a developer"... Have you considered interviewing for a job a level above that? I imagine with a few years' of experience at startups, you've learned a lot at a "design" level rather than simply an implementation level (not that there's anything wrong with that). Consider interviewing for a developer management position. Instead of focusing on specific language…

Nope I hadn't because I always considered myself 'just a coder', and immediately discarded any other kind of job. Thinking about it I have full stack experience and have often been part of the design process, so thanks for the advice I'll consider other areas too!

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#39

Post by paolomaffei »

If you are half-decent at JS (specially if you actually can use Angular) I can get you a job in London (or even near Basingstoke if you now happen to live there) no problem, I'm literally swamped with work requests and got so many colleagues looking to hire decent frontend developers (probably Rails too but I don't do that so don't know that well)

IMHO if you are in UK there's no financial sense in staying outside London as jobs (and their compensation) are much better here

(contact: paolo-at-paolomaffei-dot-it)

Re: Ask HN: I actually need a job now

#40

Post by mbesto »

IanOzsvald wrote: post #31

HackerNewsLondon will occur tonight (in about an hour) http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ and if you turn up and blag your way in (you're meant to buy a ticket in advance, offer cash on the door to pay for your pizza!) you'll see companies talking and often talking about jobs. Just network like crazy, most people there will know people hiring. Everyone is friendly, the organisers try to help startups. Go speak to co-org…

Also, http://hackerjobs.co.uk/ run by Peroni (aka Steve Buckley).

http://www.jobserve.com/ is also decent...

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