Ask HN: Underemployed and anxious. What would you do?
This maybe isn't the place for a full postmortem; suffice it to say that I came out of the program confident in my own enthusiasm for programming, and less confident in how hiring companies may interpret the presence of a bootcamp on my resumé.
In the months since, every day, I have: —Applied to two jobs here in NY, taking my time with cover letters, following up where appropriate, researching the companies, etc. These are overwhelmingly junior front-end or full stack positions. —Studied compsci and new technologies so I'm a stronger candidate —Practiced whiteboarding-style questions so that I'm prepared for interviews —Freelanced so that I can pay rent and continue surviving —In my spare time, worked on solo projects
I have gotten very little traction. I receive form rejections in response to almost every application. I've gotten far along in the process at a few places, but repeatedly hear some version of "You seem great...for a junior! Be in touch when you're mid-level." It feels like, as months go by and the hole on my resumé grows, my chances are only worsening.
I get it. I'm an unknown quantity, and the bootcamp on my resumé isn't a strong guarantor of quality. Still, I feel like I'm scrabbling for purchase. I had entertained fantasies of someday moving into games/simulation space, and that feels further and further away.
How do I get out of this hole? Do I drop the immense time suck of actively looking for work, live off my meager freelance work, and put my time into a project that makes employers take me a little more serious? Do I keep throwing good time after bad, keep my head down, keep applying to junior positions, and not ask any more questions? Do I need to go back to school?
67 comments
[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadIf you're applying to 100 jobs a day, you have no idea what you want to do. There may be 100 'developer' jobs to apply to, but a JavaScript Developer and Java Developer Position are drastically different positions. Pick one and get good at it. You might not be able to apply to 100 jobs a day this way, but I guarantee you will get more interviews this way. Quality, not quantity.
Instead, let them come to you. Just do whatever coding you'd otherwise do, for fun or pay, and focus on that. But, while doing it, see if you notice something that annoys you about some library.
Any behavior you have to work around, or just a nice to have feature. Or even any time you wonder how a feature of a library you use is implemented (maybe the documentation is vague), jump in and read the source. And now you have an open source project to contribute to, almost as if by accident.
(You could do this for any tool or platform you use too, but libraries are nice for this IMHO because sometimes they're small, and they're in the same programming language you're already used to. Jumping into, say, your operating system can be much more intimidating than into a library you already use in a language you already know that really just does one small specialized thing)
If you do consider the relocation route, I recommend trying to pick a city with a fair number of tech jobs and shortage of local candidates. In SF, I was competing against many, many entry level developers. In DC, there weren't that many.
edit: To everyone else—thanks for the replies, I really appreciate everyone's feedback. I want to be replying faster, but HN isn't letting me add any more comments. I'll respond as I can!
Have you considered applying for jobs in the boonies of NYC? NJ, Long Island, Upstate? If you are the sort of young person living in NYC I am imagining you to be, the prospect of commuting to the burbs is horror-inducing to you. It is to most of your peers, with whom you are competing; you will have a leg up if you are willing to commute to Poughkeepsie for a year.
- have you tried reaching out to your alumni network or the career development person at the bootcamp?
- what has feedback been about your interviews? if it's "we're looking for someone more senior", ask them what are the traits of a senior person and work towards that
- if you're focused on Javascript, do you know the latest frameworks kids are discussing? Angular/React/Vue? And while it's awesome you picked up Haskell, can you write RxJS?
- in terms of interview prep, you've know the answers to explaining .this, closures, class instantiation, async right? And how are your "tell me about yourself", "time when things were difficult" stories? Confident? Engaging?
I don't think you need to go back to school. Perhaps the market is flooded with bootcamp grads and now it's how do you differentiate yourself. Better portfolio site, stronger Github presence with good readmes. And like thegandhi says, sometimes it's out of your control. Some companies really just want fresh grads with 3.8 GPAs.
Also, take a week off from job hunting or even thinking about the internet. Go out camping, be out in nature, and reset.
I should ask what the traits of senior people are—I've had some really nice conversations with interviewers by asking, "If you were in my position, what would you be doing?" Sometimes it seems like they just want me out of their hair after the rejection, which I understand.
Yeah, my bootcamp taught Angular and I taught myself React and built a couple apps with it. Haven't looked at Vue, I should do that. And no, haven't used RxJS—I'll look into that, thanks!
My technical answers have been solid so far. My "time when things were difficult" stories were a little clumsy out the gate—I'm coming from a field where I never, ever got asked questions like that—but I'm getting them together now.
I appreciate your words of advice and support! The advice to take a week off is especially good, and something I should probably put an effort toward. I've been in go-mode unremittingly since June of last year, and keep putting relaxation off because I don't want to miss an opportunity.
That's really admirable! But yeah, take care of your mental health too.
When I mentioned Angular/React/Vue, I'd pick one and specialise, but be aware of the others, too. And yes, work on the "behavioral" questions. In another recent interview thread [0], jonasvp and ryandrake had some good insight worth reading.
"These are standard interview questions that you just have to have a prepared, rehearsed answer for that you can rattle off without thinking. There are tons of these types of "behavioral" questions. Tell me about a project that you worked on that failed. Tell me about a time you had to deal with team conflict. Talk about a struggling project that you had to help turn around. You can get a book full of them. Be ready with canned answers for as many as you can and practice them in front of a mirror." [1]
Ultimately, if you've landed an interview, you're pretty much 80% of the way to getting the job. The rest is just showing you're proficient in what you've written about and that you're a likeable person I'd want to work with day in and day out (the dreaded culture fit).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13874026
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13876602 (specific comment in above thread)
If you're in NYC, check out the BoroughJS meetups. I don't know if this will help you find a job but I think it will help you to feel part of the JavaScript community. You are part of that community if you choose to be, even if you don't have a job. People there will (in my experience) take you seriously regardless.
Finally, a word on bootcamps. I've interviewed several candidates who graduated from bootcamps. Some are great. Others are not. I think the attitude generally is that a bootcamp listed on a resume isn't an indication of anything. If this is one of the primary ways you define yourself, I would deemphasize it. Instead, emphasize code you've written (in the form of Github repos, Gists, CodePens, live sites, etc.) and communicate that you think like a programmer, even if you don't have a lot of experience. These are the two things I focus on when interviewing junior candidates.
I'll definitely check out the BoroughJS meetups, thanks for that.
Also, very much agree that a bootcamp on a resumé isn't an indicator of much—there were a very broad range of attitudes and skill sets at mine, and I think it's getting broader with every incoming cohort.
That's the wrong approach, IMO. The goal of job applications isn't to make the best impression possible, but rather to find companies that are interested in talking to junior engineers.
The right approach is something like make/find a spreadsheet with 500+ tech companies in NY and send out something like 20 applications per day. If you're efficient about things, you can totally send out an application in <3 minutes, so it'll take no more than an hour of grinding per day.
Save the research and application quality for when you've got a warm lead.
>the bootcamp on my resumé isn't a strong guarantor of quality
Drop it from the resume and just put in your freelance work and independent projects, IMO.
I hired someone out of a bootcamp who turned out to be the best hire I have ever made in my entire 10 year career. Initially I wasn't even aware that this person had been in a bootcamp. I proceeded to interview purely on abilities and grilled 'em on some questions about DOM, JS, CSS etc... (the candidate was applying to be on our frontend team).
First, do not let this weigh you down. 50% of anything you get in life is not whether or not you have the qualifications for it -- but if you believe you're gonna get it. It applies to asking someone out on a date, telling a risky joke, or trying to find a job. It's great you're aware of the stigma associated with bootcamps, but don't let it define who you are.
Second, and this is primarily for the other people in this thread: don't judge a book by it's cover. The aforementioned best hire I've ever made in my life was an individual fresh out of a bootcamp who, prior to that, was essentially a jarhead in the Marine corps. If I was starting something new today and needed someone technical on my team they'd be the first person I would go to. This individual started as a frontend engineer and - almost overnight - was sharing 50% of the workload with myself at every level of the stack, all the way down to configuring kafka/cassandra clusters and building internal microservices.
Finally -- sell your narrative. Ignoring the obvious baseline qualifications a technical person needs, most people are not looking for a technical genius who went to Carnegie Mellon and aced every single class. They're looking for pragmatic engineers who are quick on their feet and can dive deep to the root of an issue to engineer a straightforward solution to the actual problem. Demonstrate this ability and it will go a long way. You say that you're making it pretty far down the path so your cover letters are working. You might just need to change your narrative to flip the minds of those who keep considering you a junior engineer. People want you to help them solve problems -- they want to work with people they can trust -- show them that.
Keep doing what you are doing -- also please send me your resume to mwhalen@farmlogs.com because you sound like a rad person.
Say you know Rails, go to a Rails meetup. Say you enjoy politics and tech, find a Civic Tech meetup. In NYC, I'm certain there are tons of excellent tech related meetups that provide opportunities to socialize with the community and get to know what's going on. The added benefit is that some of the hosts of the meetups are looking for employees, or some of the members belong to companies that are looking for people.
You might say, "I don't like networking." That's fine, not every tech event is a networking event. Civic Tech meetups for example focus on working on projects in your spare time that benefit citizens. During a meetup you can sit in on a project meeting and potentially contribute if you're interested. So it's a natural way to collaborate with others on a shared goal and to learn. Very different than going to a bar and having to strike up a conversation with another person.
I don't view going to meetups as a direct method to gaining a job, but rather, increasing the likelihood of serendipity. Maybe you'll go one day, and a employee of a company announces they are actively looking for someone. Or maybe you make friends with someone knows someone who is looking for someone. Or maybe you come up with an idea of an interesting side project that could be an excellent way of proving your chops to a potential employer. The idea is that you already know what you know, that applying is hard and hugely competitive, so why not try a bit more of a circuitous route by going through humans first?
And I say this having got my first job in NYC through a friend, my first co-founder through a friend, my first startup through a friend, my first YC interview because of exceptional co-founders who were way smarter than me but I met through friends.. basically it didn't matter that I didn't go to an Ivy League or prestigious program, all that mattered was putting in a ton of effort to build my skills (like yourself) alongside connecting directly with people.
If you go to meetups and actually talk to other attendees you will certainly learn a lot, meet people in the industry and open new doors for yourself.
I was in your position 3 years ago, although not from a bootcamp but came from another country without any plausible experience / projects to show for, so I built a website and its administrative area and talked a lot about it on the interview, how I built it, the problems I encountered and so on. That might help a little bit, asking for NYC salary ( I guess around $60-$70k) withouth anything to show for is a hard decision to take for any employer out there.
A) Get more things into the top of the funnel -- fill out more applications.
B) Fix the leaks parts of the funnel -- It sounds like you get stuck at the resume screen. I don't see any quick wins here.
C) Find a new way past the leaky part of the funnel -- Have you tried contacting hiring managers or engineers directly (cold emails, networking events, ...)?