I cannot promise anything but I’m in the Utrecht area and would be more than happy to give you some advice face to face or potentially help you somehow with projects if there is a fit.
Do you have an email address to reach you?
Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
31–40 of 182 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#32Which city are you currently in?
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#33With your current state of mind you should take a break from coding.
Try to find a easy job, just to have a place to stay, eat and sleep and after 6-8 months, or when you feel better, you can attempt to seek it opportunities.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#34That’s a bit surprising given that the Netherlands has a generous social system. I’ll try as a first step to ask and look for government organizations that could potentially help and give you free stuff. Next, I’ll drop tech for a while. I’ll look for any job that has low or no barrier to entries. Washing cars, cleaning carpets, collecting garbage, etc... These are jobs with little barriers to entry and that will hav…
The Netherlands has a generous social system that I can't access because I'm not actually from here. It happens to be the last place I was in when I was told I didn't have a home or money any more.
Going "home" is kinda pointless - there's not actually any support in the UK for people like me, so I'd be sleeping rough there quickly anyway.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#35What is your actual background; - did you study - how much coding experience do you have - which languages - what types of jobs are you applying for - do you have a smartphone (is there not something like https://postmates.com/ in Netherlands) - do you have friends or family who have jobs in businesses (or their own businesses) - Etc
I have an HNC in Computing from the UK - basically a vocational pre-university qualification. It's not amazingly useful. Shortly after achieving that a lot of mental health stuff popped up which derailed things for a few years, so uni wasn't a thing. I've been coding for a very long time, and am a polyglot - Python, Go, javascript on both frontend and backend, bash. Current project is largely Go+Python+bash. Previous…
>I do not have friends or family who have their own businesses, or who could help me find a role in a business they work for.
That's rough. When your resume is by default the easiest to reject out of any pile it finds itself in, a personal connection is often what it takes to receive any consideration.
If I were you I would talk to as many people who are in a position to hire as possible. If you see a "now hiring" sign, go in and talk to someone face-to-face. Try to get any 9-5 job you can at first, even if it's grocery store clerk. It will make it a lot easier to convince someone you're a steady hire when something better comes along. I was never homeless but I did have a dead-in-the-water resume at one point with a big work gap. The first jobs I got on my own were seasonal UPS helper and furniture mover. When I got hired into tech it was with months of full-time work experience. My new employer only had to worry about whether I could do the job, and not whether I was capable of holding myself to a 9-5 schedule
I don't know to what extent this squatting stuff is a choice, but I would recommend you abandon any voluntary participation in that lifestyle as soon as possible. You're not going to bootstrap yourself out of homelessness if you're linked arm-in-arm in solidarity with other anarchists, squatters, etc. It's also just not a stable environment.
You should realize that you might personally be ok with working "enough to survive", but that doesn't fit the needs of most employers. Ultimately you have to figure out what an employer's requirements are and meet those, and one of those is almost always going to be "commitment to a working square's existence". A part of this is also convincing them that they won't be hiring your replacement in just a couple months
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#36Which city are you currently in?
Rotterdam.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#37Find a church - neither too big nor too small. Introduce yourself as someone willing to do assist with the IT/ secretarial / etc. in exchange for warm food and a shelter bed. Churches have very large networks. When you get on your feet, and you will, remember who helped you survive.
This could very well be a Job situation, but I have to wonder how someone ends up like this.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#38Make a Patreon! You mentioned that you work on an open-source project and also ran a volunteer cafe. Sounds like you are a genuine and hard-working person. Tell your story and I think you will be surprised at how generous and supportive strangers on the Internet can be :)
(Please let us know once made and also post to your other social medias!)
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#39Find a church - neither too big nor too small. Introduce yourself as someone willing to do assist with the IT/ secretarial / etc. in exchange for warm food and a shelter bed. Churches have very large networks. When you get on your feet, and you will, remember who helped you survive.
that might work in the US, but in Europe churches are poor and mostly attended by old ladies with networks of other old ladies.
Re: Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
#40I've read the comments you've written on HN. It really feels like you have a good understanding of many tech out there. I'm a bit surprised a profile like yours post this.It feels like you could easily pick up any entry level dev job? HN would always surprise me. If I were you, I'd show up in every tech meetups I could find.Talk with people, and offer free (paid?) advices for subject you feel comfortable with. After…
> It feels like you could easily pick up any entry level dev job? HN would always surprise me. Don't underestimate the extreme prejudice in tech hiring. Everyone's looking out for "red flags" and excuses to turn down a candidate. It's especially bad if you don't have either 1) recent, relevant education, or 2) recent, relevant industry experience. Open source participation might save you but not as often as you'd thi…
Als being homeless is a huge red flag for any job. It's a nasty spiral.