Ask HN: A place to sleep, a laptop, no résumé and a hungry man.

I've found myself in this situation more often than not. Due to my own fault of course. But I always ended up relying on others until I caved in, doing jobs that provided me with more money than I need but with no enjoyment and the feeling of unfulfillment, dropping them like I had a choice even if I didn't.

I can program, it's what I can do best, it's what's keeping me happy. But without a college degree, experience or a stack of projects in my pocket no one is going to believe me.

With all the app hype one could lose himself dreaming about all the money that's in the business.

But what real chances are there? What small jobs can one do with the ability to write code but the inability to prove oneself just to keep from starving?

Guitarists can busk, drifters could mow the lawn, artists can do caricartures. What can a lone man with a laptop under his arm do?

You know what I'd like to do? Offer free work experience more. I took another young guy on today, to mentor him through a project that we need done but not so badly it was worth us prioritizing it in our schedule. We're not paying him, but he's getting our time for free, and a good resume piece and reference from us if he steps up to the challenge that I think he can meet. Maybe more of us need to be doing this in our own businesses, bring back apprenticeships. If this guy does well, we'll either hire him if we can, or recommend him. I'll have a friend for life I can call on for advice in whatever speciality he chooses to go on with from here (he looks set to be a sysadmin whiz if he keeps at it). If he fails, I wasted nothing. I've done this before and I'll keep doing it as time permits.

He got in touch with us directly, somehow he'd found dev labs near him and we agreed to his request for experience. No degree or experience but a resume full of the right things you want to see from a self-learner (online Stanford classes etc) and he backed it up when we interviewed him.

Maybe try that, or ask here on HN for someone to mentor you through developing a real-world project that they need, and don't have the budget or time for. All you can lose is your time, and if things work out maybe some great new friends and a chance at a real opportunity.

Pointers to good articles on generating _real_ ad revenue would be useful.

> What can a lone man with a laptop under his arm do?

Create an online presence.

Contribute under that name.

Never ever flame or troll under that name. Appear calm and sensible and rational and kind and polite and exciting and dynamic.

There's a bunch of things you could do: Many open source projects need help. (Especially with documentation.)

Many people want some small app to help them do something, but they have no idea how much that would cost, and they have no programming skill. (I have a million ideas. "X-Face for HN profiles" is just one.)

In theory, you do jobs you don't enjoy to give you money to do things that you do enjoy; or you do a job you love which leaves you poor. (If you're really lucky you get great money and a great job.) Doing a lousy job shouldn't stop you from being able to code in your spare time.

> With all the app hype one could lose himself dreaming about all the money that's in the business.

This is, I'm sure you know, a distraction. You're not doing it for the huge 1-in-a-million chance of getting rich. You're doing it to solve a problem, or to create something awesome.

Good Luck!

I don't think most startups and medium sized require that you have a CS degree. Find an environment that is appealing to you or create one. Some options:

Apply to a couple startups even just as an intern to see whether that floats your boat.

Find a good(!) co-founder and start a company. or If you feel that the problems are deeper than just not wanting to work in a traditional environment and you have a bad outlook on live seek advice of a therapist.