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

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

#1

Post by platevoltage »

Hello everyone. I was sent over here by some folks on Discord who told me that this was a good place to get advice from a knowledgeable group, so I hope you don't mind me staring my story.

About a year ago now, I completed a Full Stack Web bootcamp. This entire year I have been submitting resumes, developing skills, building projects, working on my portfolio etc, but have gotten little traction as far as getting a job. The few interviews i've been given usually go fairly well, but result in being ghosted. I understand that this is normal, it's just that I get granted an interview so infrequently, it feels like much more of a blow.

A bit about myself. I am 39. I have been computer literate ever since we got our Macintosh LC when I was a little kid. I have been working mostly automotive jobs as an adult, some of which gave me the opportunity to do some things like build a fuel system controller, and do factory automation. Throughout the last 10 years or so I had wanted to get serious about moving into software engineering as a career, which is why I did a boot camp. Regardless of your opinion on these courses, I feel that I got what I needed out of it and have been further developing my skills ever since being done.

I have (from what i've been told) a decent portfolio and body of work. I feel my interview performance is adequate for a junior level position. Where I feel the problem lies is that my resume just isn't doing what I need it to. I have a couple jobs that could be considered relevant, but with huge gaps in between when I worked not so relevant jobs. If I were to accurately represent my work history, my resume would be 2 pages long. I also don't have a college degree. I've heard opinions ranging from "Jobs only care what you are capable of" to "It's possible, but extremely difficult".

The big question I have is, with all of this being said, how do I make myself seem like I'm worth giving a chance when the person making the decision is only looking 1 page of my life story for 8 seconds before putting it in the trash? I'm putting my portfolio URL below, which has links to my github and resume. If anyone has any helpful advice, I would love to hear it.

https://jgarrettcorbin.com

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

#3

Post by cole-k »

Honestly I quite like your portfolio. Judging from it alone I'd give you an interview if I were a recruiter. However, I'm not, so I couldn't tell you what sort of secret sauce goes into that pre-interview pass. My experience is having worked in the industry for a few years (have I made it clear enough that my worldview is very narrow? I don't want to beat you over the head with this fact)

I hope you don't mind some constructive criticism about your site anyway:

List your languages/skills strongest-to-least-strongest left-to-right. I clicked C++ since it was the the first language I saw and it told me that you weren't actually that good at it. I would probably opt for more positive sounding language like "this was my first language and while I'm familiar with it I mostly program in X." (here's my naive take - C++ and Java are some of the "traditional" backend languages, so if you want to sell yourself as being fullstack it would especially behoove you to be more forward about your experience with them).

Load things quicker. At least on Firefox, it would take as much as a second for the animations to finish as I was scrolling down. I know that I might have no attention span, but surely any recruiter looking at your page has a legitimate reason to want to see your work easily and fast.

On that note, the top bar seemed to disappear unless I scroll up. IDK if this is like a common pattern, but I'd prefer to have it more easily accessible.

I'd recommend that you put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter who is giving your life story an 8 second glance when it comes to your website. Try and flush your mind (I know you're intimately familiar with it), open it, and decide within 30 seconds whether you'd give yourself an interview. Ask your friends to do the same if you can.

Regarding your resume, I think that for junior roles your stuff is good. Don't pad it and make sure that the recruiter's eyes go immediately to your most impressive projects/skills. I think you have more than enough stuff, so you'll have to be careful about what you pick and how you present it.

I want to say again, your page is seriously cool. I hope you don't take my criticism personally - I wish you the best of luck!

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

#4

Post by platevoltage »

cole-k wrote: post #3

Honestly I quite like your portfolio. Judging from it alone I'd give you an interview if I were a recruiter. However, I'm not, so I couldn't tell you what sort of secret sauce goes into that pre-interview pass. My experience is having worked in the industry for a few years (have I made it clear enough that my worldview is very narrow? I don't want to beat you over the head with this fact) I hope you don't mind some c…

Thank you for the reply and I appreciate the constructive criticism. I'll go ahead and address the points you made.

* This is a good point, I should probably do some rearranging on the order. There seems to be no shortage of Node.js Fullstack/Backend positions, but I see your point.

* I have heard this criticism about the timing on my portfolio. I'm going to speed up some of the fades since this seems to be the main criticism I get.

* The top bar hiding itself was an artistic choice. I see this behavior on a lot of other sites. To me it's pretty intuitive, but I can see where you are coming from.

To address your overall point, I have put together a simple hit tracker with geolocation as an experiment to get an idea of who is actually looking at my work when I put in an application. My estimation is that it's about 5% or less. This is why I think my resume is the issue. Why bother clicking a link if the resume is full of red flags?

This being said, I appreciate the kind words about my work. Thank you.

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

#5

Post by linuxftw »

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 jobs.

If you want to go straight software, there's lots of jobs in Java.

IMO, front-end javascript devs are disposable and that's what everyone tries to do because it's less abstract. Backend languages are where the money is.

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

#7

Post by savorypiano »

I was in a similar situation as you, and found a software engineer job. But I also benefitted from timing, as I was able to find a job before the market starting turning down last year. Basically I was able to find a startup willing to take a chance on me, perhaps for lack of better options. Unfortunately that will be the case for those coming from non-traditional ways and entry level.

FWIW, the Who's Hiring and Who Wants to be Hired threads here on Hacker News had led me to a few interviews each month, when I was looking. That's all you need, plus maybe brush up on LeetCode.

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

#8

Post by cole-k »

platevoltage wrote: post #4
cole-k wrote: post #3

Honestly I quite like your portfolio. Judging from it alone I'd give you an interview if I were a recruiter. However, I'm not, so I couldn't tell you what sort of secret sauce goes into that pre-interview pass. My experience is having worked in the industry for a few years (have I made it clear enough that my worldview is very narrow? I don't want to beat you over the head with this fact) I hope you don't mind some c…

Thank you for the reply and I appreciate the constructive criticism. I'll go ahead and address the points you made. * This is a good point, I should probably do some rearranging on the order. There seems to be no shortage of Node.js Fullstack/Backend positions, but I see your point. * I have heard this criticism about the timing on my portfolio. I'm going to speed up some of the fades since this seems to be the main…

That's fair. I was under the impression that when places give you the chance to put a portfolio/personal website link, the people reading your application glance through them.

I took a look at your resume. I feel I agree with most of the decisions you made (like prioritizing the projects).

Some comments on this (same disclaimer as before):

I have to wonder whether you would get more mileage out of shortening your summary statement to "Full stack web developer who will help your company succeed by completing projects on time and under budget." or eliminating it entirely. Certainly at least the large font "Summary Statement" can go, which would make room for you to add another project.

I can believe the other commenter here who said that not having a 4-year CS degree will make it more difficult to stand out. So I can agree with putting your education last. But also I have this feeling that most resumes I've seen put it first. So I'm wondering whether it would make more sense to just own it. Again, your projects seem pretty legit to me, which I think can help compensate.

Finally, I would spend some time trying to play with the wording of your bullet points. It can be easy to sell yourself short and just say things like "Built using the React.js library and Typescript." but like your portfolio website is actually really cool and I feel saying something like that doesn't convey how cool it is. Maybe to get you started you can try something like "Designed and built an interactive portfolio page with interactable elements that simulate terminal windows." The JSON part is pretty good but I bet you could embellish it a bit more too. Sorry I don't have great suggestions for this one - I struggle with it too. The other tip I can give is to write impressive numbers where you can. The canonical example is like if you can say "made processing widgets 25% faster" or "increased revenue by 10%," but I think there are ways you can be creative about this.

One miscellaneous point: have you been grinding leetcode/reading cracking the coding interview? Much like the SAT, a lot of these technical interviews are just testing how familiar you are with the format and questions. It's a kind of bogus indicator of competency if you ask me. If you do the grinding, you should be ready for most the tech interviews that come your way.

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

#9

Post by platevoltage »

savorypiano wrote: post #7

I was in a similar situation as you, and found a software engineer job. But I also benefitted from timing, as I was able to find a job before the market starting turning down last year. Basically I was able to find a startup willing to take a chance on me, perhaps for lack of better options. Unfortunately that will be the case for those coming from non-traditional ways and entry level. FWIW, the Who's Hiring and Who…

This is my impression as well. I understand that I missed the gravy train, so I'm doing my best to stand out from the rest. Thank you for the suggestion. I will surely check out those threads.

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

#10

Post by platevoltage »

cole-k wrote: post #8
platevoltage wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the reply and I appreciate the constructive criticism. I'll go ahead and address the points you made. * This is a good point, I should probably do some rearranging on the order. There seems to be no shortage of Node.js Fullstack/Backend positions, but I see your point. * I have heard this criticism about the timing on my portfolio. I'm going to speed up some of the fades since this seems to be the main…

That's fair. I was under the impression that when places give you the chance to put a portfolio/personal website link, the people reading your application glance through them. I took a look at your resume. I feel I agree with most of the decisions you made (like prioritizing the projects). Some comments on this (same disclaimer as before): I have to wonder whether you would get more mileage out of shortening your sum…

To be honest, the summary does feel cringy. I'm very new the whole corporate world and the language that comes with it (I'm an auto repair person by trade). I think you are right about the summary. If I were them, I wouldn't care about it either. Same with cover letters, but we need to write them anyway I guess.

(preface: I am not referring to the poster that was mentioned above. I appreciate their input as well) I understand that having a comp sci degree, or really any degree gives you an advantage. It's just really discouraging to hear it talked about like it's an insurmountable obstacle. Especially since I've been told over and over again that "Jobs only care about what you know and what you can do". We actually had a couple of comp sci grads in my bootcamp, which I found interesting.

All of the wording suggestions you have sound really good to me and I'll take them into consideration when I'm reworking my resume this weekend. I've been trying to keep my resume from looking like a big wall of text, while not sounding completely robotic. I've also always had a math/science brain, not a literary one.

I wouldn't say I've been grinding leetcode (I spend time on Codewars for no reason other than I discovered it first), but I do jump on occasionally, more so if I have a technical interview coming up. If you couldn't tell, I spend a lot more time building projects and upskilling than I do with algorithms. Funny enough, the two technical interviews that I've made it to didn't have this whiteboard style interview. The last one I did was adding a feature to a javascript front end. It went okay, but I was seriously out of practice with Vanilla Javascript DOM manipulation as I do most frontend with React, and they didn't tell me what to expect.

Just like before, thank you for all of the suggestions.

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