101–110 of 192 posts
Good luck!
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>How about just a "solid, hard-working senior developer"? When you say "brilliant", most good, competent developers think of a truly 1 in 1000 brilliant developer we know, and think of how short we fall from that. no one thinks that because it's pr speak. i've never met anyone deterred by "brilliant" or "ninja" or "10x" or etc.
No one? Never met? Well then, nice to meet you! Yes, such terms in a job description - or in my case, in initial contract meetings - are red flags for me. Red enough to either never apply or show myself out with some excuse. Because my definition of "brilliant" may not match their definition of "brilliant" in terms of capability or efficiency, and I don't want to find out how high the expectations are after the agree…
Took random contract gigs from IRC, elance style sites, and Craigslist. Also did telemarketing, and random day labor jobs off and on. Eventually a startup gave me free room and board in exchange for programming help. Saved and relocated to an area with more jobs after that startup imploded.
Found an abandoned trailer some property owners agreed to let me squat in. Got to tap their electric line in exchange for helping out with deliveries and tech work for their tractor store. Kept up with random craigslist tech gigs etc and started my own consulting company bootstrapped with retail work income and help from friends from IRC for bigger jobs. One of the random contracts I took let me code with free reign and ended up keeping me on as a full time software engineer and gave me several years of experience making custom prototypes and doing pentesting for fortune 500 companies as well as angel funding for a startup of my own.
Never had a problem getting work since.
Be relentless and don't limit yourself to tech work until you have some buffer in the bank. Be willing to relocate if the market is dry in your area. Never ever stop learning marketable skills and taking interviews you are not qualified for until you are. Most of the "mandatory" minimums on job postings are optional if you have some quality open source code to prove your capability.
Questions / answers thus far:
there's been a lot of good advice in this thread thus far and a few understandable questions.
I'm going to answer them all here as I can no longer edit the main thread.
first off, great suggestions - some of these were already on my mind (gym, library, camping specifically) and seeing them reinforced via comments is encouraging.
to answer some questions that have been raised:
1. > homeless in the USA? Just cannot understand how this would happen
I'm still trying to piece this together myself. I failed multiple job interviews that were very difficult, ran out of unemployment and am now facing eviction. it takes 6 to 12 months to get into government housing in colorado. unless i get a job before that, its the car, the woods or the street.
> 15 years full stack
I don't get it either.
2. > How resonable is the person/company you rent from to secure an agreement to stay on despite the late rent?
zero reasonable. they filed after 3 days and after i explained that i'm having health issues.
3. > Have you applied for unemployment?
yes, i was approved as my reason for quitting was appropriate, however it ran out quickly as rent is extremely expensive.
4. > Built In Colorado job
I am aware and use it, however yes the process is slow
5. > if he were a brilliant engineer he probably wouldn't be on here with this post
Define brilliant. i certainly haven't claimed to be brilliant, but i do claim to be an excellent employee, extremely fast learner and someone who has never been fired and who has always excelled at their job. I suspect some people think i'm brilliant and others do not.
6. > Why would 3 days late on your rent involve a court date and eviction?
Denver / Colorado is harsh as fuck, apparently.
7. > It'd be really shocking to me if this happened in the US without some prior history/grounds for eviction
then be shocked, my friend. its happening and i've never been evicted in the past nor has my wife. nothin but smooth sailing in my past. this is denver
In all of this i also forgot to mention that I was diagnosed as being bipolar which has helped wreck my life.
8. > How have you been an engineer for 15 years and still: Rent an apartment, Don’t have a few laptops lying around, Don’t have any savings while having no kids
This series of questions assumes that i have made sound financial decisions over the years. i have not. it also assumes i do not have a child whereas I do from a previous marriage. also, it assumes i've never owned a house, i have... doesn't mean i still do.
This sucks! I'm so sorry to hear man. I've spent a lot of time with people who are homeless, which has caused me to think about this very question though I haven't had to put any of this into practice so grain of salt. - Get a membership to a cheap gym so you can use their shower (and potentially wifi) if the shelter doesn't work out. In many areas it's possible to get a membership for $10-20/month. Clean your clothe…
Do you remember which thread it was?
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Are you talking about yourself? I can hardly see someone with 40k karma in hn charging less than $100/hour. Stop selling yourself short.
Yes, I'm talking about myself :) I know I'm worth more, but that doesn't help if the buyers with money to afford it aren't here. I'm exploring remote, we'll see what happens.
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How have you been an engineer for 15 years and still: - Rent an apartment - Don’t have a few laptops laying around - Don’t have any savings while having no kids Each item above, on its own, is normal but all together doesn’t make sense. For the last 15 years you should have been making 60-200k and you obviously didn’t sink it into a house, computer hardware, or savings. Where did it all go? That’s why this doesn’t ad…
So many things could have happened, not everyone is able to save up. Also, it's irrelevant - either you want to help or not. Discussing the "impossibility" of his situation is not yours to judge, seriously.
A cautionary tail could do a lot of good here.
Why not let something good come out of the discussion that could prevent others from ending up in this situation?
A postmortem of sorts.
I could have ended up like this guy, but I found personal finance religion when I was 28. After making six figures for six years all I had was monthly payments equal to my paycheck and not much to show for it.
It’s pathetic how many people here leap to pity. The OP wasn’t asking for it.
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which part?
How have you been an engineer for 15 years and still: - Rent an apartment - Don’t have a few laptops laying around - Don’t have any savings while having no kids Each item above, on its own, is normal but all together doesn’t make sense. For the last 15 years you should have been making 60-200k and you obviously didn’t sink it into a house, computer hardware, or savings. Where did it all go? That’s why this doesn’t ad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya and there is prob a racoon that fucked a bear out there too :). Good for that racoon! Yay for finding insignificant details that pale in comparison to the big picture. Do you want to stand on the deck of the titanic pointing out all the little boats that are still floating or talk about the HUGE boat that is sinking under your feet?
You're not going to win friends with this kind of belligerent talk. Why don't you stick with the approach you took in your other top-level comment, which I thought was pretty great: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17317062