Tell HN: I used to be homeless and want to work as a software developer

Indeed London is much more expensive. I left the city for that reason myself, but probably for a year or two career wise it might be great. Long term, I fully agree with you re nicer apartment and more cash.

I've never been homeless, but I do have a degree in physics/astronomy, and I've recently (less than two years ago) made the move to "software engineer." The reality is that although I had a great deal of experience programming as well as highly relevant problem solving skills, it was very difficult to get interviews for software engineer positions. As soon as I had one position, however, and could put the title on my CV, suddenly, senior level positions opened up for me (afterall, I did have the experience, just not formally as a "software engineer.").

I think the key is to use your cover letter to highlight the programming you have done and the problems you have solved as well as highlighting any other relevant skills. With a degree in science, you will have skills and a way of looking at problems that is different to a typical software developer.

It is probably also useful to be targeted in your search. I started by applying to software positions in research contexts, the sort of places I had previously worked in other roles. In other words, doing software in a physics context (with knowledge that a typical CS grad may not have). Or, if you can find a small company doing something that is very interesting to you, you may be able to talk your way into an interview. That sort of place needs talent, but doesn't have the cachet (and perhaps, the budget) to draw more traditional candidates, so, depending on who is doing the hiring, they may be more willing to take the risk on a non-traditional candidate.

> be in top 10% of kaggle or any other competitive programming site and I would bet jobs would hunt you, not the other way around

I do wonder, is there an equivalent to Kaggle in other areas in software (not for data science)?

Getting a foot in the door is definitely hard. Place I work at isn't hiring at the moment.

Have several suggestions.

1- Have you considered looking at freelance platforms like Upwork?

There is a bit of a game that needs to be played to get the first few projects.

- bid quickly (as soon as job posts come up) - underbid - keep trying.

It'll probably help you hone your skills and have specific projects to talk about during interviews.

I helped my wife step into this. Quite quickly, a few projects led to a nice part-time role with a US startup via Upwork. A while later, tried applying full time locally and the projects and work was easy to talk about during the interview.

2 - Have you considered going to local/slightly distant meetups via https://www.meetup.com/ or eventbrite? Networking in person makes it easier to push the CV through HR. And in some cases, there are HR folk attending the meetup to step in. I once attended DWPs Hackathon in Leeds (which turned out to be a recruitment event basically. so sign up to those perhaps?)

3 - I'd recommend having a LinkedIn profile. Saw some questions about how to put the homeless time gap in there. Don't have any suggestion. But I think having a profile would be better than not.

If you had a LinkedIn profile, I can share that easily. Have lots of recruitment people connected in my profile.

Connect here https://www.linkedin.com/in/zubairlk/

And there are some other people I wanted to share your profile. Perhaps I could try sharing the CV. But definitely easier as LinkedIn is super easy to parse. The format is the same for everyone. One glance is enough.

Add a little udacity/coursera online course icon and that is sufficient to push the profile through the door sometimes.

CVs require more investment to parse.

do you have a laptop? if yes, you might be able to work for me remotely, shoot me an email: andrew.forsure@gmail.com